Dear Mamma:-While Anne gets ready to go out I'll begin a letter to you. There is to be an out-of-door service tonight up by the library and afterward an organ recital in the chapel. The same program was given Friday night but because of the severe thunderstorms very few people went, so the organist is to repeat it tonight. I don't see that they have any particular system of giving notices here - we just hear of things at table &c.
It is later now and I am sleepy. The music was very good. We sat outside and heard part of it, but Prof. Hammond plays better, I think. They have a choir of 50-60 here in regular term time, and I guess they sing well from what people say. The sunset was beautiful. The colors in the lake are fine. That lake is certainly a great attraction.
Yesterday we went on an all-day trip on the lake - a botanical trip primarily, but many others went. It rained when we started but we thought it would clear and it did. The trip the length of the lake took four hours and more each way - 40 miles each way in a slow steamer. At the other end we took small boats and rowed three or four miles in all, studying the aquatic vegetation. Lots of things I never saw before, and all very luxuriant. It was fine to look down into the clear water and see so many things. And the cat-tail swamps were magnificent - literally miles of cattails higher than our heads. Anne and her professor, Dr. Needham went primarily to collect may-flies, but found few. Dr. Needham asked me to go in the little boat with them, which was very pleasant. He is a nice man - the easy sort to get on with. We wore our old clothes - and I was perfectly comfortable! Coming home the sunset was beautiful. Next week I am going with the botanists to Enfield Gorge, said to be the best one around here. There is a remarkable waterfall that I want to see, too - neither that or Enfield is a long trip, though transportation is slow enough to make them all day affairs. Then this week the famous German Dr. Zuntz lectures five days on respiration - so the time will be full. Shall not take any time off except Saturday.
I think I have decided to stop in Nashua on my way back rather than on my way up. Shall hope to reach Boston Sat. Aug. 15 and call on Flora and Uncle Cleveland. Perhaps Flora and I can go down the harbor in the afternoon if there is time. I'd like to get one salt breeze this summer. Then Sat. evening I'll go over to Chelsea and spend Sunday with Elizabeth, going Monday probably to Whiteface if I can manage to get a little shopping in first. I do need to go to a store sometime this summer. I must get some corset covers somehow but I wish I knew how. I can't buy them.
Miss Smith writes that her sister and Helen have reached Newburyport.
The postal was very pretty. Phillips must be lovely. I want to get there sometime even though I can't this summer. It is ten o'clock and I must go to bed.
Love to you and to all,
AbbyJuly 25