if we were living at one of the beach houses; then I could do you
some character studies, and fill your imagination with groups of
sea-goddesses, with their (or somebody else's) raven and blonde
manes hanging down their shoulders. You should have Aphrodite in
morning wrapper, in evening costume, and in her prettiest bathing
suit. But we are far from all that here. We have rooms in a
farm-house, on a cross-road, two miles from the hotels, and lead
the quietest of lives.

I wish I were a novelist. This old house, with its sanded floors
and high wainscots, and its narrow windows looking out upon a
cluster of pines that turn themselves into aeolian harps every time
the wind blows, would be the place in which to write a summer
romance. It should be a story with the odors of the forest and the
breath of the sea in it. It should be a novel like one of that
Russian fellow's--what's his name?--Tourguenieff, Turguenef,
Turgenif, Toorguniff, Turgenjew--nobody knows how to spell him. Yet
I wonder if even a Liza or an Alexandra Paulovna could stir the
heart of a man who has constant twinges in his leg. I wonder if one
of our own Yankee girls of the best type, haughty and spirituelle,
would be of any comfort to you in your present deplorable
condition. If I thought so, I would hasten down to the Surf House
and catch one for you; or, better still, I would find you one over
the way.

Picture to yourself a large white house just across the road,
nearly opposite our cottage. It is not a house, but a mansion,
built, perhaps, in the colonial period, with rambling extensions,
and gambrel roof, and a wide piazza on three sides--a self-
possessed, high-bred piece of architecture, with its nose in the