WOODRIDGE, _May_ 10.

"DEAR MRS. EVAN,

"For the past week I have been delving in the seed bed, and until it was
an accomplished fact, that is as far as putting on the top sheet of
finely sifted dirt over the seeds sleeping in rows and rounding the
edges after the most approved methods of bed-making, praying the while
for a speedy awakening, I had neither fingers for pen, ink, and paper,
nor the head to properly think out the answer to your May-day
invitation.

"So you have heard that we are to take a long vacation this summer, and
therefore ask us to join your driving and tramping trip in search of
garden and sylvan adventure; in short to become your fellow-strollers in
the Forest of Arden, now transported to the Berkshires.

"It was certainly a kind and gracious thought of yours to admit
outsiders into the intimacies of such a journey, and on the moment we
both cried, 'Yes, we will go!' and then appeared _but_--that little
word of three letters, and yet the condensation of whole volumes, that
is so often the stumbling-block to enthusiasm.

"The translation of this particular _but_ will take a quire of paper,
much ink, and double postage on my part, and a deal of perusive patience
on yours, so to proceed. Like much else that is hearable the report is
partly true, insomuch that your father, Dr. Russell, thinks it necessary
for Bart to take a real vacation, as he put it, 'An entire change in a
place where time is not beaten insistently at the usual