though we had been born here.
I am thinking of putting in my time of exile by running for Mayor.
Meanwhile, it is a wonderful place in which to write the last chapters
of "Once Upon a Time." The house is quite wonderful. In Spring and
Summer it must be rarely beautiful. It has trees in front and a yard
and a garden and a squash court: a sort of tennis you play against the
angles of walls covered smooth with cement. Also a studio as large as
a theatre. Outside the trees beat on the windows and birds chirp
there. The river flows only forty feet away, with great brown barges
on it, and gulls whimper and cry, and aeroplane all day. I have a fine
room, and about the only one you can keep as warm as toast SHOULD be,
and in England never is.

Cecil has engaged a teacher, and a model and he is coming here to work.
He is twenty years old, and called the "boy Sargent." So, as soon as
the British public gets sober, we will begin life in earnest, and both
work hard. I need not tell you how glad I am to be at it. I was with
you all in heart last night and recited as much as I could remember of
"Twas the Night Before Christmas," which always means Dad to me, as he
used to read it to us. How much he made the day mean to us. I wish I
could just slip in for a kiss, and a hug. But tonight we will all
drink to you, and a few hours later you will drink to us. God bless
you all.

DICK.

December 29th.

DEAR MOTHER:

A blizzard has swept over London. The last one cost the City
Corporation $25,000!! The last man who contracted to clean New York
of snow was cleaned out by two days of it, to the tune of $200,000.
Still, in spite of our alleged superiority in all things, one inch of
snow in Chelsea can do more to drive one to drink and suicide than a
foot of it "on the farm." At the farm we threw a ton of coal against
it, and lit log fires and oil lamps, and were warm. Here, they try to
fight it with two buckets of soft chocolate cake called Welch coal, and
the result is you freeze. Cecil's studio is like one vast summer hotel
at Portland Maine in January. You cannot go near it except in rubber
boots, fur coats and woolen gloves. My room still is the only one that
is livable. It is four feet square, heavily panelled in oak and the
coal fire makes it as warm as a stoke hole. So, I am all right and can
work nicely. Janet Sothern came to lunch today and Cecil and she in
furs went picture gazing. Tomorrow we have