windows all night long. No wonder I have nightmares. Last night I dreamed that I was a saint with an apple pie for a halo—this boarding house pie habit will eventually tell on the strongest nerves.

Last night I cut my leg on a barbed wire—no dear I wasn't hurdling the fence—the wire was on the side walk, where everything except the kitchen stove usually lies. I hope I won't have lockjaw—it's harder on a woman than it is on a man anytime. I was just thinking how clever it would be, if a man who had a chattering wife, would keep a bunch of rusty pins on hand.

I sat down to the piano this morning and ran through that pyrotechnical Solfigetto by the other Bach, and Father Time, who sat enchanted, said, "You and the piano has met before." It's a shame to cheat the aged.

Thank heaven that the sunshine is free and that the florist's window is gratis to look at, otherwise on my slender means I should have to take advantage of the bankrupt law.

My old friend Insomnia again stands incessantly at the foot of my bed and bids me corner the sunrise market. A heavy heart is mine tonight and though I try to fancy beautiful pictures in the crystal ball of the future, I grow sick with anticipation as the visions fall away before they are half formed, leaving me melancholy and wondering if there is an angel somewhere who collects the sighs of such ever-repressed feeling.

Goodnight,
MARIANNE.

October 5.

Lorna Dear:

Well, Lorna, you and I were "all day suckers" to believe that Mrs. Phyllis Lathrop was touring California; I bumped plump into her yesterday in front of the poor-house. No, dear, I did not go there to stay, merely to visit. Phyllis is nice in her red-headed way and looked very fresh and sweet with the lower part of her face lost in a tulle abyss. She lives just a whisper away from me—so strange I haven't seen her before. She's trotting around with a Sioux Falls fellow who looks like a Dutch luncheon favor. Every time he lifts his hat I look for bon-bons to drop out. Says she must be loving someone all the time, even if she is considered in the light of an accommodation train. She's the unfinished sort of a woman who carries her beauty around in little tubes and seems so used to audiences that I always feel that she must have sung between the acts.

Town Topics said something about "The soft breezes of California restoring the bloom to Phyllis' cheeks"—to think that T. Ts got fogged in the matter is consoling to such lesser lights as you and I. You can take it from me, "the soft breezes of California" are blowing into her room in a nearby Sioux Falls boarding house, but instead of being laden with the scent of flowers they are redolent of hash from the cookery. I'll take off my hat to her. She was a slick duck. Of course she denied nothing to me—her time is up soon; then she will lay her history before the Judge, who is always busy picking hairs from his coat and doing other things of vital import while you pour out your heart's woes.

The fellow whose motor sent me to the brink of the Styx, is now preparing me by night light to take the 33d degree of happiness. You have heard of him I know, Carlton Somerville, the Wall Street broker. I forget what it was his wife did that got on his nerves, but anyway he too is hibernating in Sioux Falls clay. We have gotten "First-namey" and have frankly decided that in order to keep our cleverness from dying of inanition, we will practice on each other.

How could you, my dearest friend, accuse me of being forgetful of Bern? He wouldn't appreciate me at all if I forgot how. And really six months of non-practice would be ruination.

Carlton has fallen in love over his depth with that beefy Mrs. Claymore and takes me motoring to pour his love (of her) into my aural labyrinths. I don't object to playing second fiddle, but when it comes to holding the triangle for the drummer, I pass blind. Never mind, while he isn't watching some day he'll get stung, for I'm really fond of him. You say that you are so much stronger willed than I am—did you ever look at yourself in the mirror? Carlton has eyes that I adore—they are the deeply sad sort that would make one think that love had passed that way. If it really hasn't, he might as well begin to put up the grand stand and have the tickets printed. My dear, I'd never marry another man with a memory—most inconvenient asset that a husband can possess.

"Chappie," the Englishman, has started a society paper—sort of six months gestation of Town Topics, so Carlton and I are batting around after midnight, so "we won't become saw." There are all sorts of ways to make a bee buzz. Do keep Bern from wearing red ties while I'm gone and give him a shove along the straight and narrow, once and so often.

After a month and a half of drinking Sioux Falls water, I would bring a higher price as a lime kiln than I would in the woman market. One's pelt gets wind tanned and such a thing as a daintily flushed face is as unlooked for out here as consideration from the natives.

My head ached so yesterday that I called on a doctor, "Visit including all medicine, one dollar." Isn't it "patetic?" He raved about the climate and said he brought his wife here with T. B., and she improved so much. Naturally I asked, "How is she now?" He said, "O, she's dead." Don't blame him for raving about the climate, do you?

My dear it is worth a trip out here to see a whist party "let out." No, not "bridge,"—they haven't heard of it yet—just plain whist; but as I was saying, to see one turn out with its white alpaca skirt and blue satin ribbon belt. I've paid two dollars at Hammerstein's to see things not half so funny. O, for a sip of Fleischman's coffee—there are grounds for divorce in every cup out here. The butter we eat, walks in from the country alone, and at every meal we get smashed potatoes piled as high as the snow on the Alps. I can't look a potato in the eye any more.

There is a couple here on business from Michigan,—a Mr. and Mrs. Jones, odd name that. Isn't it sad that they are so happily married, they might both be getting divorces, but as it is they are simply wasting a year out here for nothing. I passed the Judge on the street this morning and I was so nervous that I walked bow-legged. But thanks to skirts et cetera-et cetera.

I have sampled all the churches and have finally landed at the Christian Science house of worship, as I would rather any day hear a pianola grind out its papier mache music than listen to a poor performer.

If I had Carnegie's millions, I'd go straight to Chicago, buy a big, fat, thick, beef steak, step into the middle of it and eat my way out. I'm hungry, hungry. I worry down the "dope" that they deal out in the dining room, then go back to my sanctum and finish on limey water and crack-nells—you know what they are, a powdery sort of counterfeit cake that chokes you to death if you happen to breathe while you're chewing it.

Last night while trying to cut some stringy roast beef and still retain my dignity, the man with the red tie said: "Put your other foot on it." I'm afraid if I don't eat potatoes again, my stomach will shrivel so that I will never be able to sit through a course dinner when I get back. Potatoes distend it all right—I feel like I have swallowed one wing of Fleischman's yeast factory whenever I eat