forbids their presence there, their trade is unlawful, why shouldn't
their characters be of necessity in harmony with--but never mind, let it
go, it irritates me.

Later.... I have been reading Yung Wing's letter again. It may be that
he is over-wrought by his sympathies, but it may not be so. There may be
other reasons why the missionaries are silent about the Shensi-2-year
famine and cannibalism. It may be that there are so few Protestant
converts there that the missionaries are able to take care of them. That
they are not likely to largely concern themselves about Catholic converts
and the others, is quite natural, I think.

That crude way of appealing to this Government for help in a cause which
has no money in it, and no politics, rises before me again in all its
admirable innocence! Doesn't Yung Wing know us yet? However, he has
been absent since '96 or '97. We have gone to hell since then. Kossuth
couldn't raise 30 cents in Congress, now, if he were back with his moving
Magyar-Tale.

I am on the front porch (lower one--main deck) of our little bijou of a
dwelling-house. The lake-edge (Lower Saranac) is so nearly under me that
I can't see the shore, but only the water, small-pored with
rain-splashes--for there is a heavy down-pour. It is charmingly like
sitting snuggled up on a ship's deck with the stretching sea all around
--but very much more satisfactory, for at sea a rain-storm is depressing,
while here of course the effect engendered is just a deep sense of
comfort and contentment. The heavy forest shuts us solidly in on three
sides there are no neighbors. There are beautiful little tan-colored
impudent squirrels about. They take tea, 5 p. m., (not invited) at the
table in the woods where Jean does my typewriting, and one of them has