Perhaps I told you that I removed to a snug brick city-built house for the winter. I have changed it this spring for a much older and country-like wood house, which has some trees, grass, and shade, a garden, and _perhaps_ some flowers if the sunshine brings them up. I am, of course, all too unpretending and simple in my life to have a gardener, so shall lack the beauties which such assistance would develop. I was once a very tolerable gardener myself among flowers, but I have no longer strength to spend on the strong lap of Mother Earth, much as I love her and her dear little nurslings of cowslip and violets, but good sturdy old dame, she does a great deal without help, and knows very well how to dress herself without the aid of a _fille de chambre_. But here I am on this fourth large page, and not even yet noted the contents of your letter. The photograph! I am sorry that you withheld it, I should have been very glad to receive it, if you would entrust it to me, and I still hope you will decide to do so. I should prize it, but I cannot say when I should be able to return the favor. I have no photographs either good or bad. I am never able to go to a gallery to sit for one. The last time was in Paris. All I ever had have been picked away long ago. I am the debtor of all my friends for pictures, some of them several times over, but they know how it is, and I hope excuse me. If I should ever again be in condition to sit, and can get a result that my friends will accept, I will take them by the hundred and relieve myself from embarrassment, but you should know that as a _picture_ my photograph is not at all to be coveted. If natural, it must be uncomely. I was _never_ what the world calls even “good-looking,” leaving out of the case all such terms as “handsome,” and “pretty.” My features were strong and square, cheek-bones high, mouth large, complexion dark; my best feature was perhaps a luxuriant growth of glossy dark hair shading to blackness, but that is comparatively thin now, and silver gray, all within the last three years. It changed from its original blackness to its present shade in the first six weeks of this present illness in 1874. I never cared for dress, and have no accomplishments, so you will find me plain and prosy both in representation and reality if ever you should chance to meet either. I beg you to _believe_ this and to _remember_ it to avoid any disappointment which might possibly occur. Not that I think it could change the friendship of a sensible person, but I like people, and especially my friends, to know me as I am, and not hold a false estimate of me.