It often strikes me that Dr. Robin MacRae's mental attitude
would also be the better for some slight refurbishing. I will promise to
read your book, provided you read one of mine. I am sending herewith the
"Dolly Dialogues," and shall ask for an opinion in a day or so.

It's uphill work making a Scotch Presbyterian frivolous, but persistency
accomplishes wonders.

S. McB.

May 12. My dear, dear Judy:

Talk about floods in Ohio! Right here in Dutchess County we are the
consistency of a wet sponge. Rain for five days, and everything wrong
with this institution.

The babies have had croup, and we have been up o' nights with them. Cook
has given notice, and there's a dead rat in the walls. Our three camps
leaked, and in the early dawn, after the first cloudburst, twenty-four
bedraggled little Indians, wrapped in damp bedding, came shivering to
the door and begged for admission. Since then every clothesline, every
stair-railing has been covered with wet and smelly blankets that steam,
but won't dry. Mr. Percy de Forest Witherspoon has returned to the hotel
to wait until the sun comes out.

After being cooped up for four days with no exercise to speak of, the
children's badness is breaking out in red spots, like the measles. Betsy
and I have thought of every form of active and innocent occupation that
could be carried on in such a congested quarter as this: blind man's
buff and pillow fights and hide-and-go-seek, gymnastics in the dining
room, and bean-bags in the school room. (We broke two windows.) The boys
played leapfrog up and down the hall, and jarred all the plaster in the
building. We have cleaned energetically and furiously. All the woodwork
has been washed, and all of the floors polished. But despite everything,
we have a great deal of energy left, and we are getting to that point of
nerves where we want to punch one another.

Sadie Kate has been acting like a little deil--do they have feminine
deils? If not, Sadie Kate has originated the species. And this afternoon
Loretta Higgins had--well, I don't know whether it was a sort of fit or
just a temper. She lay down on the floor and howled for a solid hour,
and when any one tried to approach her, she thrashed about like a little
windmill and bit and kicked.

By the time the doctor came she had pretty well worn herself out.
He picked her up, limp and drooping, and carried her to a cot in the
hospital room; and after she was asleep he came down to my library