The ice being thus broken, let me ramble on! How do-ist thou? And how is the moist and cool summer suiting thee? I hope, well! It has certainly been a boon to most people. Our house has been full of company of which tomorrow the last boys will leave, and I confess I shall enjoy the change to no responsibility. The scourge of life is _responsibility_--always there with its scowling face, and when it ceases to someone else, it begins to yourself, or to your God, if you have one. Consider the lilies, how free they are from it, and yet how beautiful the expression of their face. Especially should those emerging from "nervous prostration" be suffered to be without it--they have trouble enough in any case. I am getting on famously, but for that drawback, on which my temper is liable to break; but I _walk_ somewhat as in old times, and that is the main corner to have turned. The country seems as beautiful as ever--it is good that, when age takes away the zest from so many things, it seems to make no difference at all in one's capacity for enjoying landscape and the aspects of Nature. We are all well, and shall very soon be buzzing about Irving Street as of yore. Keep well yourself, dear Grace; and believe me ever your friend, Wm. James. To this word about enjoying the aspects of nature may be added a few lines from a letter to his son William, which James wrote from Europe in 1900:-- "Scenery seems to wear in one's consciousness better than any other element in life. In this year of much solemn and idle meditation, I have often been surprised to find what a predominant part in my own spiritual experience it has played, and how it stands out as almost the only thing the memory of which I should like to carry over with me beyond the veil, unamended and unaltered. From the midst of every thing else, almost, _surgit amari aliquid_; but from the days in the open air, never any bitter whiff, save that they are gone forever." _To Miss Frances R. Morse._ STONEHURST, INTERVALE, N. H., _Sept. 18, 1902_. DEAREST FANNY,--How long it is since we have exchanged salutations and reported progress! Happy the country which is without a history! _I_ have had no history to communicate, and I hope that you have had none either, and that the summer has glided away as happily for you as it has for us. Now it begins to fade towards the horizon over which so many ancient summers have slipped, and our household is on the point of "breaking up" just when the season invites one most imperiously to stay. _Dang_ all schools and colleges, say I. Alice goes down tomorrow (I being up here with the Merrimans only for one day) to start Billy for Europe--he will spend the winter at Geneva University--and to get "the house" ready for our general reception on the 26th. I may possibly make out to stay up here till the Monday following, and spend the interval of a few days by myself among the mountains, having stuck to the domestic hearth unusually tight all summer....