admit that it was highly artistic, but I thought it a “_peutrop_” for the season, considering that the earliest snows had commenced to fall. Oh, but don’t you wish now that you had come and worked at the head of my “shop”--didn’t _I_ wish it? More than once I sighed in my inmost soul for you. How rich I should have been, with you at my side! Just think of it! I shall write to Fannie sometime when I hain’t told all the news to you--please hand her this if she looks patient and strong enough to stand it. How much I wonder what you are all doing at home! I seem entirely to have lost the thread, and from the stray little thrums which I get hold of I cannot pick it up. I am just now in despair about Sally. Some one writes me that they suppose I know all about her and Vester’s _sickness_! Imagine the effect of this piece of intelligence. Another says, it was fortunate they were with Ber and Fannie, as they were sure of good care!!! This is consoling. What did they have, and how did they get it, and how was it, and when was it, and how is it now? Do pray you write and tell me. I am distressed and can’t at all help myself. I do hope they have not had a serious illness, but I keep feeling all the time that _somebody_ will be sick. I keep writing Sally at Washington, but have no idea where she is and where you are this hot summer, and Fannie, poor, dear, neglected Fannie. She ought to cross me off her books, and I guess she has before this time. I know there has never been a day since I left that the entire troop of you all has not passed in panorama before me, and I have attempted to place you all as I thought it most likely to be, but I suppose I have been wide of the mark.