Mother dear, Livy & Clara & the children are out shopping, & Rosa is packing trunks for Venice—so I will use this opportunity to drop you a line. Twichell & I did a good deal of tramping together among the mountains & had a good time. I seem to have walked the rheaumatism out of myself. Twichell sails from Liverpool tomorrow. He & I walked from Martigny to Chamounix & Mont Blanc; & a day or two ago Livy & I drove there in a two-horse carriage & remained a day—9 hours’ drive thither & 9 hours back. It tired Livy out & she went to bed early last night—but she is out shopping again today. At Chamouny she ascended part of a mountain in a chair borne by men, & then walked to an ice-cavern in the great glacier below the Grandes Mulets, & back again—which foot-journey is about equivalent to descending from the farm to Deuce’s and climbing back again. We had perfect weather & some marvelous Alpine spectacles, both by daylight & full-moonlight.

Clara had charge of the children while we were gone. They entertained her—sometimes with philosophical remarks & sometimes with questions which only the Almighty could answer. Susie said, “Aunt Clara, if the horses should run away & mamma be killed, would you be my mamma?” “Yes, for a little while, Susie, till we got to Elmira—but you wouldn’t want your mamma to be killed by the horses, of course?”—— “Well,----I wouldn’t want her to go in that way, but I would like to have you for my mamma.”

There’s discrimination for you!

Another time, Susie asked Aunt Clara if she wouldn’t like to be God. Clara could not make her understand why that there were reasons why she would prefer to reserve her decision in thatⒶemendation matter.

Susie persecuted Clara with questions as to how God could build all these people out of dust “and make them stick together.”

You must understand that Susie’s thinkings run nearly altogether on the heavenly & the supernatural; but Bay’s mind is essentially worldly. Bay says she does not want to go to heaven—prefers Hartford. The other day she had a private conference with Clara, & said, impressively: “Aunt Clara, I am going to tell you something. Papa gives me a good deal of trouble lately.”

“Why, Bay!”

“Yes, he does, Aunt Clara; papa is a good deal of trouble to me. He interrupts me when I am busy; & he wants me to come get in bed with him—and I can’t do that with jelmuls” (gentlemen;) I don’t like jelmuls.”

“Why Bay, you like uncle Theodore, don’t you?”

“O yes, but he ain’t a jelmul, he’s a friend.”

The other day I gave Bay a small gold ring. Afterward she said to Clara: “It was very delicate in papa to give me that ring.”

We can’t quite make out what she meant by that stately word, unless she meant it was a “delicate attention” on my part.

We all love you dearly, mother dear, & likewise all that be of the farm & the homestead.