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August 19th, 1916.

"Little diary, I have been neglecting you lately, but now you and I must
collect our thoughts, for we have got to write a long, long letter to
Donald and tell him all about the vacation--the first that I ever had.

It was the first time that I was ever really at the seashore, too,
except that one afternoon in June when Dr. Bentley took me down to
Nahant in his car. Weren't the Thayers dear to have me as their guest at
beautiful Manchester-by-the-Sea? Ethel (I wonder if Donald will be
pleased to know that his _real_ sister has asked me to call her by her
first name?) insisted that they did it for my own sake, but I know that
it was really on his account. They were two weeks of wonder for me; but
I wish that he might have been there. How they all miss him--even Dr.
Bentley. I think that there is nothing finer than such a friendship
between two men. Why, he even calls on Donald's family still. He came to
Manchester twice in the fortnight that I was there. Dr. Bentley wants me
to call him 'Philip,' when we are not in the hospital, and I do ...
sometimes. It seems perfectly natural, even though he is much older than
I--he is over thirty; but I suppose that is because at home we called
almost every one by his first name. (We are rambling, little diary. I
don't believe that Donald would be particularly interested in the fact
that I call Dr. Bentley, 'Philip.')

He _will_ be interested to know how the sea impressed me, though, and
again I find myself wholly at a loss for words to express my feelings.
It was so overwhelming in its grandeur and far-stretching expanse; so
beautiful in its never-ending procession of colors; so terrible in its
might, when aroused. I have seen it asleep as peacefully as one of my
babies (all the hospital babies are children of my heart), and I have
seen it in anger, like a brutal giant. I wish that I had not seen its
latter mood, for, when it caught up the little boat that had been torn
from the moorings, and hurled her again and again against the rocks
until there was not a plank of her left unbroken--while the wind
shrieked its horrid glee--my growing love for it was turned to fear. No,
I can never care for the ocean as I do for my mountains. I cannot forget
that it was the waters which stole my dearest treasures from me.

Still, the memory of that sto