ill not
believe when you look at the pictures that not three hundred years ago,
if there had been postcards then, you would have seen only forty rough
log-houses built behind palisades for fear of Indians; maybe the
watch-house was where the Country Club is now! Instead of dances and
parties the only pleasure was to go to church, where you were called by
the roll of a drum. A stern man named Thomas Sayres beat on the drum and
you had to go whether you liked or not, because Abraham Pierson, the
first minister, governed the state as well as church.

I am not sure even the Indians weren't nicer to live with, because they
liked beads and bright things, as we do, especially mirrors. Why, they
sold anything they _had_ for mirrors! And they were kind and pleasant
till the Dutch and English spoilt their dispositions. _Their_
parties--yes, they _had_ parties!--were in their cornfields--oh, miles
of beautiful cornfields that are covered with dark mysterious cedars
now, like sad thoughts of the sunny past. The Indian families came to
help each other in the cornfields, and the young men fell in love with
the maidens and proposed as they do at our dances. If you said "no,"
perhaps they knocked you hard on your head, and took you anyhow! I am
pleased it is not so now. I should not like Mr. Caspian to do it.

He was very nice, though, at Southampton, and asked to have the
Grayles-Grice stop at one of the shops (the most _fascinating_ shops,
like at Vichy and Aix where your dear mother took us the summer before
the war). There he bought wonderful bonbons--candies. I ate only one,
and the Goodrich girls the rest.

You will like the picture I send of the cottage which has been built on
to a windmill. I should love to have that. There are lots more
windmills, soft and gray and fluffy-looking, like Persian pussy cats
sitting up in the dunes; so maybe I shall have one some of these days.

We saw some lovely roads in France when we motored with Madame la
Marquise, but we were never on any road quite so sweet (I have to say
sweet, it is a right word!) as the road of the Shinnecock Hills. We
curved so much among the dunes, I was not allowed to drive, though it
was easy as flying in a dream; and the dunes were the colour dunes would
be in dreams: gold and silver mingled with warm blue shadows. They had a
look of gold and blue flame in fires made of driftwood, because the sun
was so bright on them that day, and if you screwed up your eyes to