If you were only here you'd have such lots of sharp things to say about the sights, for there's always something going on here. Broadway beats the circus hollow. New York itself is the Greatest Show on Earth. You'd admire to see the men, all handsomed up, just as if they were going to meeting; and you'd find lots of remarks to pass about the women, dressed up like summer boarders all the time. And, of course, they are summer boarders really--New York is where the summer boarders come from. When they are up in Auburnvale they call us the Natives--down here they call us Jays. Every now and then on the street here I come across some face I seem to recognize, and when I trace it up I find it's some summer boarder that's been up in Auburnvale. Yesterday, for instance, in the car I sat opposite a girl I'd seen somewhere--a tall, handsome girl with rich golden hair. Well, I believe it was that Miss Stanwood that boarded at Taylor's last June--you know, the one you used to call the Gilt-Edged Girl. But the people here don't faze me any more. I'm going in strong; and I guess I'll come out on top one of these fine days. And then I'll come back to Auburnvale and I'll meet a brown-haired girl with dark-brown eyes--and I'll meet her in church and her father will marry us! Then we'll go away in the parlor-car to be New-Yorkers for the rest of our lives and to leave the Natives way behind us. I don't know but it's thinking of that little girl with the dark-brown eyes that makes me lonelier sometimes. Here's my love to her. Your own JACK. IV NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 1894. DEAR MIRIAM,--You mustn't think that I'm lonely every day. I haven't time to be lonely generally. It's only now and then nights that I feel as if I'd like to have somebody to talk to about old times. But I don't understand what you mean about this Miss Stanwood. I didn't speak to her in the car that day, and I haven't seen her since. You forget that I don't know her except by sight. It was you who used to tell me about the Gilt-Edged Girl, and her fine clothes and her city ways, and all that.