’MY DARLING CARRY—You will be rejoiced to learn that I have discovered a harbour of refuge for you, where that minute organ you call your mind may lay aside its heaviest load of trouble. Here, at last, is one corner of Europe where you need have no fear of anybody mistaking you for one of the Boston girls of fiction; indeed you might go about all day talking your beloved Texas with impunity; although, my dear young lady, that is a habit you would do well to drop, for sooner or later it will get you into trouble when you are least expecting it. But short of scalping children or using a bowie-knife for a fork, I think you might do or say anything you pleased here; it is the most out-of-the-world sort of place; a community of fifteen or twenty, I should guess, hidden away in a hole of a valley, and separated from the rest of the universe by great ranges of mountains and interminable miles of moorland. The people seem very friendly, but shy; and I don’t quite catch on to them yet, for their speech bothers me—scarcely any two of them seem to have the same accent; but I hope to get to know something more about them next Monday, when they have a New Year celebration, which I am invited to the same. Would you like to join in? By all means come if you care to; the station is Lairg; wire, and I will meet you there. You will miss the wild excitement of paying afternoon calls and drinking tea; but you will get sunlight and fresh air into your lungs. The talk about the fierce weather is all nonsense. There is a sprinkling of snow on the higher hills, but the temperature is quite agreeable. In any case I expect you to come here with me in March, when the salmon-fishing will begin in earnest; and I have no doubt you will have made the acquaintance of the whole of the people in a couple of days, shy as they are. There is another point I have not forgotten. As you seem determined to set yourself up for your lifetime with reminiscences of your travels in Europe, I have had to consider what you could carry away from here. I am afraid that Inver-Mudal jewellery wouldn’t make much of a show; and I haven’t seen any shell necklaces or silk scarves or blue pots about. But what about a Highland maid? I suppose the N.Y. Customs officers wouldn’t charge much for that article of _vertu_. Now the maid who waits on me here is very pretty and gentle in manner; and I suppose she could be induced to go—for a proper consideration; and you could begin the training of her now, and have her quite accomplished by the time we got home. Sounds rather like slavery, don’t it?—but she would be going to the land of the free, and the banner would wave over her. She gets eighty dollars a year and her board; I’d go better than that, if you took a fancy to her.