Capt. Chule to dinner. He
came up the West coast with us and is accustomed to a temperature of
120 degrees.

New Year's eve we spend with Lady Lewis where we dine and keep it up
until four in the morning. We will easily be able to get back here but
how we can get a hansom from here to the great city, I can't imagine.
I have seen none in five days. It is fine to be surrounded by busts of
Carlyle, Whistler, Rosetti and Turner's own, but occasionally you wish
for a taxicab. Tomorrow I am going on a spree to the great city of
London. The novel goes on smoothly, and all is well. I am still
running for Mayor of Chelsea.

Love to you all.

DICK.

LONDON--January 1, 1909.

DEAR MOTHER:

I drank your health and Noll's and Charley's last night and so we all
came into the New Year together. I hope it will be as good for me as
the last. Certainly Chas. is coming on well with another book. It is
splendid. I am so very, very glad. Some of the very best stories
anybody has written will be in his next book.

We dined at the Lewis's. There were 150 at dinner and as we live in
Chelsea now--one might as well be in Brooklyn--we were a half hour
late. Fancy feeling you were keeping 150 people hungry. I sat at Lady
Lewis's table with some interesting men and one beautiful woman all
dressed in glass over pink silk, and pearls, and pearls and then,
pearls. She said "Who am I" and I said "You look like a girl in
America, who used to stand under a green paper lamp shade up in a farm
house in New Hampshire and play a violin." Whereat there was much
applause, because it seemed she was that girl, the daughter of a Mrs.
Van S----, who wrote short stories. Her daughter was L---- Van S----
now the wife of a baronet and worth five million dollars. The board we
paid then was eight dollars a week. Now, we are dining with her next
Monday and as I insisted on gold plate she said "Very well, I'll get
out the gold plate." But wasn't it dramatic of me to remember her
after twenty two years?

DICK.

LONDON-February 23, 1909.

DEAR MOTHER:

George Washington's health was celebrated by drinking it at dinner. I
had been asked to speak at a banquet but for some strange reason could
not see myself in the part. The great Frohman arrived last night and
we are all agitated until he speaks. If he would only like my plays as
some of the actors do, I would be passing rich. Barrie asked himself
to lunch yesterday and was very