DEAREST FANNY,-- ...Here I am having a little private picnic all by myself, on this effulgent Sunday morning--real American September weather, by way of a miracle. I ordered my bath-chair man to wheel me out to the "Hochwald," where, he having been dismissed for three hours, until two o'clock, I am lying in the said luxurious throne, writing this on my knee, with nothing between but a number of Kuno Fischer's "Hegel's Leben, Werke und Lehre," now in process of publication, and the flexibility of which accounts for the poor handwriting. I am alone, save for the inevitable restaurant which hovers on the near horizon, in a beautiful grove of old oak trees averaging some 16 or 18 feet apart, through whose leaves the sunshine filters and dapples the clear ground or grass that lies between them. Alice is still in England, having finally at my command had to give up her long-cherished plan of a run home to see her mother, the children, you, and all the other _dulcissima mundi nomina_ that make of life a thing worth living for. I _funked_ the idea of being alone so long when I came to the point. It is not that I am worse, but there will be cold weather in the next couple of months; and, unable to sit out of doors then, as here and now, I shall probably either have to over-walk or over-read, and both things will be bad for me. [Illustration] [Illustration: "Damn the Absolute!" Chocorua, September, 1903. One morning James and Royce strolled into the road and sat down on a wall in earnest discussion. When James heard the camera click, as his daughter took the upper snap-shot, he cried, "Royce, you're being photographed! Look, out! I say _Damn the Absolute_!"]