Farview,
North Chatham, New York.
24 Spetember [sic] 1921Abby Dear:
It is a wonderful day, as all of [them] have been since I came, even the misty rainy one last Wednesday when Jean, Dorothea and I walked miles and got drenched to the skin, and fetched in the load of pine boughs and red maple and woodbine and such.
The Music Box is lovely with its decorations and we keep adding as we gather on our rambles, bittersweet, red haws, pine cones, long streaming Virgin's Bower, milk weed pods!
Thursday and Friday Dorothea had such fun here by ourselves, and did all sorts of nice things, and had the daily stroll to the village and long evenings playing with Erebus and reading. And today Erebus caught his first bird, a tiny baby wren, so pitiful in its warm limpness. Theodore saw Erebus bringing it to the porch and made him drop the little victim, but too late to save it, and we all grieved, but no one could really punish the cat for following its instinct for self preservation and food supply. Theodre [sic] was the good scout, and he very gently carried the bird off to bury it snugly, and came back looking rather white, and saying, "Of course, I know the cat was not wicked but you might at least have shut him in the house while I was having the funeral!"
He chases grass hps [sic] bugs and crickets and eats them, he has caught small mice, a mole and frogs, and one day before I came he got a tiny chipmunk, but this is his first bird. He could not have got this had it not been so half fledged and weak or helpless. But it does seem queer to have so young abird [sic] so late in the season. There are hundreds of bluejays flashing over the fields, and the chickadees are droll and dear, and the chewinks have not gone yet. We see nuthatches and thescreech [sic] owls still wail all nigh and phoebes sit almost in our laps, and hawks sail so beautifully over the marshes. Flickers and crows everywhere!
The family came out last night and Anne Buffum with them. She is a nice girl, and she was so excited over your greeting, bursting into keen enthusiasm and saying how she did love your course and what fun the laboratory work was, even if she did not hand in her note book as promptly as you desired! And she did so wish you would give the sex hygiene courses!
She thinks you are wonderful and I agree perfectly with her! I am sure it will be a happy week with her. She and Dorothea will go in town with the family on Monday probably and Jean will motor them back late in the afternoon, Jean staying on a day or so. I shall love my lone day and sit in blissful adoration of my little hill top all the day.
Have I told you how we have garnered two barrels of hickory nuts? I am lame and stiff from top to toe, and my hands are stained with walnut juice and grapes, cut with jack knife and blistered from shucking and pulling and scrateched [sic] by beloved Erebus, and my legs are torn to red gashes by the brambles and briars, but it is all fun and oh, I do so wish you might be here with us, instead of in New York when I can not be there with you.
The girls are going off to a picnic with the Ackwoyd [sic] crowd and then to a dance in Nassau after that, so we shall not see them again until past midnight. They are so pretty to watch dancing in our Music Box and playing about.
I have read Dabgerous [sic] Ages by Rose Macauley and Queen Victoria by Strachey and enjoyed each in its way, delighting in Queen Victoria. She does be [sic] a human being in that book, and could she have any say, it would be censored and condemned even as was the Greville collection of interesting facts!
And, I drink milk and eat eggs and cereal, and nibble chocolate when I can remember it and probably I am growing fat. I feel welland [sic] that is all that need matter! But it really is hard work and I do have a devil of a time remembering to drink phosporic [sic] acid afore meals. One day I did remember three times, and one day I never remembered once, but usually I manage to get in two doses. And I really like it, too!
I have stopped to chat with Anne and hear her tales of your friend Jeannette Marks, and Anne asks me to send you her love. Also Dorothea always would have me say the things she feels and does not always remind me to set down. And it is timefor [sic] me to be making me respectable for dinner. I am sure you made a nice tea party and supper party and goodness knows it is the spirit and not the food that makes real parties! And half the fun is in makeshift and informality. And I hope it is a happy weekend at Mamaroneck.
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