During all the 15 months we have been spending on the continent, we have been promising ourselves a sight of you as our latest & most prized delight in a foreign land—but our hope has failed, our plan has miscarried. One obstruction after another intruded itself, & our short sojourn of three or four weeks on English soil was thus frittered gradually away, & we were at last obliged to give up the idea of seeing you at all. It is a great disappointment, for we wanted to show you how much “Megalopis” has grown, (she is 7 now,) & what a fine creature her sister (aged 5) is, & how prettily they both speak German. There are six persons in my party, & they are as difficult to cart around as nearly any other menagerie would be. My wife & Miss Spaulding are along, & you may imagine how they take to heart this failure of our long cher Ⓐemendation promised Edinburgh trip. We never even wrote you, because we were always so sure, from day to day, that our affairs would finally so shape themselves as to let us get to Scotland. But no,—everything went wrong; we had only flying trips here & there in place of the leisurely ones. which we had planned.

We

We arrived in Liverpool an hour ago very tired, & have halted at this hotel (by the advice of misguided friends)—& if my instinct & experience are worth anything, it is the very worst hotel on earth, without any exception. We shall move to another hotel early in the morning, to spend tomorrow. We sail for America next day in the “Gallia.”

We all join in the sincerest love to you, & in the kindest remembrances to “Jock” & your sister.