annot tell you how we have followed you, with
what interest and delight through your travels, as you have told their
story in your letters to your mother. She has let us have the privilege
of reading them, and we have been with you in steamer, yacht, felucca,
gondola, Nile-boat; in all sorts of places, from crowded capitals to
"deserts where no men abide,"--everywhere keeping company with you in
your natural and pleasant descriptions of your experiences. And now that
you have returned to your home in the great city I must write you a few
lines of welcome, if nothing more.

You will find Arrowhead Village a good deal changed since you left it.
We are discovered by some of those over-rich people who make the little
place upon which they swarm a kind of rural city. When this happens the
consequences are striking,--some of them desirable and some far
otherwise. The effect of well-built, well-furnished, well-kept houses
and of handsome grounds always maintained in good order about them shows
itself in a large circuit around the fashionable centre. Houses get on a
new coat of paint, fences are kept in better order, little plots of
flowers show themselves where only ragged weeds had rioted, the
inhabitants present themselves in more comely attire and drive in
handsomer vehicles with more carefully groomed horses. On the other
hand, there is a natural jealousy on the part of the natives of the
region suddenly become fashionable. They have seen the land they sold at
farm prices by the acre coming to be valued by the foot, like the corner
lots in a city. Their simple and humble modes of life look almost
poverty-stricken in the glare of wealth and luxury which so outshines
their plain way of living. It is true that many of them have found them
selves richer than in former days, when the neighborhood lived on its own
resources. They know how to avail themselves of their altered position,
and soon learn to charge city prices for country products; but nothing
can make people feel rich who see themselves surrounded by men whose
yearly income is many times their own whole capital. I think it would be
better if our rich men scattered themselves more than they do,--buying
large country estates, building houses and stables which will make it
easy to entertain their friends, and depending for society on chosen
guests rather than on the mob of millionaires who come together for
social rivalry. But I do not fret myself about it. Society will