as about
my domestic arrangements. Amelie does everything for me. She comes
early in the morning, builds a fire, then goes across the field for the
milk while water is heating. Then she arranges my bath, gets my coffee,
tidies up the house. She buys everything I need, cooks for me, waits on
me, even mends for me,--all for the magnificent sum of eight dollars a
month. It really isn't as much as that, it is forty francs a month,
which comes to about a dollar and eighty cents a week in your currency.
She has on her farm everything in the way of vegetables that I need,
from potatoes to "asparagras," from peas to tomatoes. She has chickens
and eggs. Bread, butter, cheese, meat come right to the gate; so does
the letter carrier, who not only brings my mail but takes it away. The
only thing we have to go for is the milk.

To make it seem all the more primitive there is a rickety old diligence
which runs from Quincy--Huiry is really a suburb of Quincy--to Esbly
twice a day, to connect with trains for Paris with which the branch road
does not connect. It has an imperial, and when you come out to see me,
at some future time, you will get a lovely view of the country from a
top seat. You could walk the four miles quicker than the horse
does,--it is uphill nearly all the way,--but time is no longer any
object with me. Amelie has a donkey and a little cart to drive me to
the station at Couilly when I take that line, or when I want to do an
errand or go to the laundress, or merely to amuse myself.

If you can really match this for a cheap, easy, simple way for an
elderly person to live in dignity, I wish you would. It is far easier
than living in Paris was, and living in Paris was easier for me than the
States. I am sorry, but it is the truth.

You ask me what I do with the "long days." My dear! they are short, and
yet I am out of bed a little after four every morning. To be sure I get
into bed again at half past eight, or, at latest, nine, every night. Of
course the weather is simply lovely. As soon as I have made sure that
my beloved panorama has not disappeared in the night I dress in great
haste. My morning toilette consists of a long black studio apron such
as the French children wear to school,--it takes the place of a
dress,--felt shoes inside my sabots, a big hat, and long
gardening-gloves. In that get-up I weed a little, rake up my paths,
examine my fruit trees, and, at intervals, lean on my rake in a Maud