August 14, 1900. The packers come to-morrow at nine for the big pictures. They will be shipped August 21st on the Anchor Line steamer _Bolivia_ and will be three weeks reaching Boston. To dine with the Dutch Secretary, de Stirum, who has taken John Loudon’s place. Met the Danish minister who told me that there really are grounds for hoping the Legations (at Pekin) are safe. If this is true, the newspaper correspondents who sent the despatches with the horrid details of the supposed murders ought to have some of the tortures they invented practiced on themselves. Mme. de Lucca (she was Miss Kennedy of New Orleans) the mother of one of the Italian secretaries at Pekin, met me in the street the other day. I suppose my face showed the sympathy I felt for her, as the morning papers stated that all the people at the Legations had been killed. “Why do you look at me like that?” she asked. “Don’t you suppose I should know if my son were dead? He is perfectly well and safe!” * * * * * August 20, 1900. J. decides he wants to go to Oberammergau for the Passion Play. We got right to work at closing up, and shall work like Indians till the last minute. The real hot weather began about mid-July and has kept up steadily. No terrible days like those in Seville where the mercury this month goes up to 110, but a dead level of 85, rising to 90. Nights always cool with a sea breeze coming up about ten o’clock. We dine on the terrace; at night the loss of the flowers does not trouble us. There is always a jug of iced lemonade for callers; as our terrace is voted the coolest place in Rome, we are popular and keep late hours, making up for it next day by the inevitable siesta from one to three. In the shadow of St. Peter’s Dome we watch the constellations march across the sky and think of you at home, looking at the same old Cassiopeia from the piazza at Oak Glen. For many years I kept up a desultory correspondence with Henry James; we wrote not more than a few times a year and only when we had something particular to say. I ought to have kept his letters with greater care, but in my wandering existence all papers became _anathema maranatha_. From the few that have survived I chose the following, written after receiving some rather poor photographs of J.’s “Triumph of Time”, which he had watched with such keen interest as it slowly grew into a reality in the Roman studio. It was now in its place on the ceiling of the Children’s Room in the Boston Public Library. Lamb House, Rye. August 2d, 1901. My dear Maud Elliott.