When this appointment had been made, James saw his way clear to taking the sabbatical year of absence from college duties to which he was already more than entitled. For nine years he had allowed himself only the briefest interruptions of work, and by 1892 he was in a badly fatigued condition. He sailed for Antwerp in May, and took his family with him. He had no more definite purpose than to escape all literary and academic obligations and "lie fallow" in Europe for the next fifteen months. Letters will show that he accomplished this with fair success. * * * * * Meanwhile, those which immediately follow were written from Cambridge. The first of them was to a Boston neighbor and correspondent, one letter to whom has already been given and to whom there will be a number more. Sarah Whitman, who had lived in Baltimore before her marriage to Henry Whitman of Boston made her a resident of that city and of Beverly, was a person to whose charm and talents and taste it would be impossible to do justice here. She was a lover of every art, and worked, herself, at painting, and with more success and great distinction in stained glass. Eager and generous of spirit, she was constantly confided in and consulted by a small host of friends. She was, in an eminent degree, one of those happy mortals who possess a native gift for friendship and hospitality. At the date of the next letter she was, for a season, in England. _To Mrs. Henry Whitman._ CAMBRIDGE, _Oct. 15, 1890_. MY DEAR MRS. WHITMAN,--It does me good to hear from you, and to come in contact with the spirit with which you "chuck" yourself at life. It is medicinal in a way which it would probably both surprise and please you to know, and helps to make me ashamed of those pusillanimities and self-contempts which are the bane of my temperament and against which I have to carry on my lifelong struggle. Enough! As for you, beat Sargent, play round Chamberlain, extract the goodness and wisdom of Bryce, absorb the autumn colors of the land and sea, mix the crimson and the opal fire in the glass, charm everyone you come in contact with by your humanity and amiability; in short, _continue_, and we shall have plenty to talk about at the next (but for that, tedious) dinner at which it may be my blessing to be placed by your side! Also enough!