* * * * * November 3rd. I blush to confess to this length of interval. I was obliged to break off this unfinished apology for something better and before I could resume it again I was obliged to go for several days up to town. Hence endless complications and further interruptions and delays. But meanwhile I have been reading further your Laura Bridgman, which has not only brought back a hundred old recollections and reverberations to me, things of the past, images and persons, which I more or less perceivingly knew about then, but has freshly reconstituted for me your father’s high distinction and the greatness of his beneficent career. When you last wrote me you told me of your mother and of her continued triumph over time. I hope it is even yet not seriously menaced, and I beg to be recalled to her indulgent remembrance. Your husband has my best wishes for whatever of beautiful and slow he may have in hand. To which I must add my goodnight before I am again interrupted and despoiled of the last tatters of what has tried to be the reparatory promptness of yours very constantly, _Henry James_. [Illustration: HENRY JAMES At the age of twenty] [From Theodore Roosevelt.] White House, Washington. October 29, 1903. My dear Mrs. Elliott: I shall read the book with the greatest interest and refresh my memory of the story. I have always felt peculiarly drawn to your family, and I appreciate the compliment of receiving such a book from your father’s daughter. Sincerely yours, _Theodore Roosevelt_. [To my Mother.] New York, March 20, 1905. The Reverend Percy Grant of Ascension Church sent me a photograph of J.’s drawing of you, with the request that you write a few words on the same and return it to him with some remarks concerning your memories of Ascension Church, where grandfather sat with you beside him and listened to the good English preached by Bishop Eastborn. September 3, 1905. How dreadful the news of the Russo-Japanese War. I seem to be the only person who is for Russia. Every one I meet says, “Plucky little Japan!” But Russia is Christian and her people are white, and Tolstoi is Russian. I suppose in the eternal verities it is all right, and that out of her humiliation a new life will spring for Russia. I am dreadfully sorry for both peoples; the loss of life is so inhuman that it makes the Boer War seem like child’s play. * * * * *