igold of G----
W----'s and I am dying to inflict it on you. Then if you like it,
hurrah!

_To Miss Woolsey, Dorset, Aug. 13, 1868._

I was right glad to get your letter yesterday, and to learn a little
of your whereabouts and whatabouts. You may imagine "him" as seated,
spectacles on nose, reading The Nation at one end of the table, and
"her" as established at the other. This table is homely, but has a
literary look, got up to give an air to our room; books and papers are
artistically scattered over it; we have two bottles of ink apiece, and a
box of stamps, a paper cutter and a pen-wiper between us. Two inevitable
vases containing ferns, grasses, buttercups, etc., remind us that we are
in the country, and a "natural bracket" regales our august noses with
an odor of its own. A can of peaches without any peaches in it, holds
a specimen of lycopodium, and a marvelous lantern that folds up into
nothing by day and grows big at night, brings up the rear. But the most
wonderful article in this room is a bookcase made by "him," all himself,
in which may be seen a big volume of Fenelon, Taylor's Holy Living and
Dying, the Recit d'une Soeur, which have you read? Les Soirees de Saint
Petersbourg, Prayers of the Ages, a volume of Goethe, Aristotle's Ethics
and some other Greek books; the Life of Mrs. Fry, etc. etc. Such a queer
hodge-podge of books as we brought with us, and such a book-case! The
first thing "he" ever made for "her" in his mortal life.

Our house isn't done, and what fun to watch it grow, to discuss its
merits and demerits, to grab every check that comes in from magazine and
elsewhere, and turn it into chairs and tables and beds and blankets!
Then for "them boys," what treasures in the way of bits of boards, and
what feats of climbing and leaping! Above all, think of "him" in an old
banged-in hat, and "her" in a patched old gown, gathering brushwood in
their woods, making it up into heaps, and warming themselves by the
fires it is agoing for to make.

"Stick after stick did Goody pull!"

Mr. P. is unusually well. His house is the apple of his eye, and he is
renewing his youth. Thus far the project has done him a world of good.

_To Mrs. Stearns, Dorset, September 13, 1863._

Yesterday Mr. F. and George drove somewhere to look at sand for mortar,
and the horse took fright and wheeled round and pitched George out,
bruising him in several places, but doing no serious harm. But I shudder
when I think how the m