them. You have to come down on the meat with such force to make any impression on it, that more gets pushed up between your teeth than goes down your alimentary canal; then you spend the balance of the night squandering Japanese dental floss. I unconsciously finish my prayers with "Lord preserve us from the holy trinity of roast beef, roast mutton and roast pork."

You can recognise one of the clan in a moment by what is known as the "Divorsay jaw." No feek and weeble expression on our faces but "Do or die" is the look we have in our optics.

Every time I go to church I vow I'll never go again. The organ is asthmatic and the wheezing gets on my gray matter.

The Judge has begun to wear a fur coat—Dakota cow fur, I think, and he looks for all the world like a turkey gobbler in distress.

I sleep on what they call here a "sanitary couch." Can't fathom the mystery of the name, for mine is so chucked with dust that I dream I'm in a sand storm crossing the Sahara, and when I awaken my sympathies are keen with the camel.

There's a new boarder here whose face looks like a chapel and every time she opens her mouth you're afraid it's going to be the Lord's Prayer. She wears a wide ruching which makes her look excited; distributes tracts, and can't see a joke. She says she's Miss and leaves envelopes around with "Mrs." written on them in red ink—modest writing fluid I've always considered it.

Will you buy me some new puffs? Mine are all ratty and I feel bare-footed without them. Enclosed is a clipping from my hair. Read it carefully. False hair is no crime as long as it matches—like that German song that says "Kissing is no sin with a pretty woman."

Have you caught "Three Weeks" yet? I had a violent attack a few days ago. Cured it with a small dose of Christian Science before meals and some of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which I shook well after using.

You can imagine what disastrous effect Eleanor Glynn's book had on the "Divorce Colony." We all bunched together and said "What's the use," and if it hadn't been for the old man who eats his soup out loud, we would have bolted in a mass to suggest "Free Love" to our respective "Fiascos"—Dakota's past tense for "Fiance."

I long so to flash my calciums on a Fifth Ave. stroller that I'd flirt with God if I met him.

I close dear with a sigh over my chin, which is getting triple (an invention of the devil).

Auf wiedersehen,
MARIANNE.

October 25.

My Dear:

I've changed lodgings and before I took the new chambers, I inquired of the landlady if there was any electricity in the house and she answered "Yes," so today I asked here where it was, and she pointed to the telephone. O, me! O, my! this life is wearing me to a fraz!

Last week the autumn leaves fell and in order to show Mrs. Judge how simple and near to nature I live, I raked their lawn, and ours, clean, and stood long after dark making huge bonfires on a line with the sidewalk. But lo! the fleas that were of the earth became the fleas of me and I have occupied most of my time since scratching. But anything to pass the hours away.

Our hedges are cut for the last time this fall, and look as though they are fresh from the barber. Isn't that phrase "for the last time" the most desolate utterance that a human voice can make? It goes thundering down the aisles of time only to be lost in the arcana of treacherous memory. To dream for the last time—to love for the last time—bitter contemplation—funereal introspection.

I am suffering from acute nostalgia—by this time you are standing in the gun-room at Keith Lodge, drinking your first. I can hear Duncan ask: "Scotch or Irish," and see you tip it off with Blake and the rest. No bridge for you tonight—early to bed and tomorrow morning you'll all start out in your natty knickers and short kilts to murder things that will fall in bloody feathery heaps at your feet. Native woodcock, jack snipe, black mallard, grouse, etc., the restless eager setters doing their own retrieving; the soft dank ground daintily overspread with the frond of marvelous fern like my window pane this morning with its delicate tracery in frost; the tall-stemmed alders echoing your shots to skyward; the big dense timber with its springy ground all saturated with the fragrance of the mounting sea: I seem like something dead whispering to you from the tomb. Nothing lasts longer than twenty-four hours in New York—not even a memory, so no one misses me. It's another of God's jollies and I know I'm ungrateful dear, for you are thinking of me I know, with my dear old "Sport" ready to point for you tomorrow, just to receive your pats of recognition and thanks. My feelings are worn into meaningless smoothness like the head on an old coin, and because I have added my quota of absurdity to the morning papers I am no longer interesting. But, pshaw! one can't buy cocaine for a nickel, and as I could live extravagantly on the interest of my debts, I haven't more than five cents to invest.

Don't mind this slump in grit—it will return to par and slang tomorrow. Keep a record of all you do to send to me, and above all—win the cup. With whom are you shooting?

I will now stuff the cracks of my door with medicated cotton, open the portholes and smoke my cigarette alone—Lord preserve me, if anybody knew! See if you can't get the Humane Society to form a branch out here to feed and water the widows.

I have just returned from a little walk with Carlton—I suppose my eyes prattled, for he smiled at me through his wrinkles and was rather more thoughtful of my comforts than usual. His Insouciance is charming and always turns the tide of my melancholy. He is the only man who ever ventured to stand on my tack and take me broadsides. We have framed up a little Bacchic plot to be enacted on our way back from the Post where I shall soon meander to mail this on the late Rock Island.

I am certainly in love, because I know the symptoms, but I can't tell with whom. Some temperature, high pulse and strange flutterings—but who is the victim? Bern or Howard in New York or Carlton here? The thought of all of them stirs me, so how am I to know which is in the lead? Hope the period of incubation will soon be over and the blooming thing assert itself. I have often been vaccinated and the thing always takes, but still I am not immune and never will be until I am six feet under, even if I live to be an hundred years old! Did you catch the an? But it's disgusting not to know whether it is the measles or something worse, however I am taking all precautions and awaiting developments.

I often wonder what I'll do with my decree when I get it—I can't wear it on my finger, and it certainly isn't the thing for gold leaf and a shadow box—Oh! I shan't waste time placing it; perhaps Carlton will find a pigeon-hole for it somewhere.

I haven't written to Bern in days, but I don't care; I never considered a banker as one of the human race, anyway. Poor Bern; he's thrown out like a bill in Parliament! Beaten by a blackball called Carlton—I'd hate to see him now. Roland the Furious is charming in a poem, but in a drawing room, prosaic and expensive.

Carlton and I went to church Sunday and were refused communion—the dear good Bishop has but one eye, so he sees things half