Dear Mamma:-I got home from New York Tuesday. Had a fine time and the Shearers seemed glad to have me stay there. Monday I went up to Columbia and Prof. Underwood showed me many interesting things in the Botany department and then around the University in general. He showed me the big Baldwin locomotive that they have in the engineering department and that runs sixty miles an hour on rollers right in one spot. Then all the big mining machinery &c is there full size so that their enginnering students can have practical experience. Then Prof. Calkins showed me all around the Zoölogy department, which has just been opened to women. Heretofore they have had to work at Barnard. Then I went on up to New York University which is much farther up, and rather hard to get to now, tho a part of the new subway is to reach them. Helen Gould has given them much, a fine library and dormitory among other things. The Hall of Fame that there was so much in the papers about a few years ago is there. They have a fine view from that over to the Palisades and up the Hudson. Prof. Bristol there was most kind - gave me lunch and then showed me about and took me down to the Am. Museum of Nat. Hist to a reception to Prof. DeVries. All the Zoölogy & Botany people of New York were there and I enjoyed it very much. Saw quite a few whom I knew.
Tuesday I went to one of the new elegant city high schools. There are eight teachers in biology in this one school, and they have a fine equipment and interesting classes. Then I took the twelve o'clock train and got here at 4:30. It was certainly a nice trip.
Since then I have been working in the laboratory, and trying to find a place in the village for Alice Cheney Ela to stay. She wanted to spend several weeks here, but there simply isn't a place for her to stay. She is here now, come Friday & is spending Sunday with me here in Wilder, but she will have to go to her sister's in Vermont tomorrow for all I can see. Her knee makes her a little lame and she can not walk much so she would have to be on the car line and there simply isn't any place to be had except at the Hotel where the charges are too high for what one gets in return. Her knee is much better & she seems well otherwise. I am glad to see her.
Am glad you and Papa are getting on so well. Don't try to do too much. Have you had the new stove brought yet? Better get it pretty soon so that you could have a fire there if there came a sudden cold snap. And if Papa isn't able to get up the wood and coal and care for the ashes. I wish you would hire Roscoe. He could come in once a day and get you supplied. It wouldn't take him long. Fifty cents a week would do it, I think. It will be too hard for you to do as it gets cold. You would be more apt to get cold and cough badly.
A missionary whom I heard last year at Wellesley, a man who told most remarkable lion stories, speaks today at twelve and Robert Speer this evening so I didn't feel that I had to hear Mr. Patten this morning. There is some sort of a missionary conference at Amherst from which we are getting the tag ends.
Mountain Day comes this week Wednesday or Thursday, according to weather. Hope one day will be good, but they ought to have had it one of the elegant days of this last week. The foliage is not very bright this year, but yet the colors are lovely.
Hope you and Papa are as well as usual. Love to you both,
Abbie.Oct. 9.