(Dictated to F.L.O. Jr.)

Your letter of the 12th May came last night. I am sorry to hear of your illness and of Pretyman’s resignation.

All the rest of your news is reassuring and relieves me of anxieties.

You are right in supposing that I had not fully understood the scheme of the fountain. Particulars that you mention, especially the two upright jets “to be used solely for illuminating purposes,” add precisely the elements which I felt to be required.

I am still often picturing to myself the probable results next summer of our planting scheme, and thinking of expedients by which they may without much expense, be made more effective. The name of the broad-leaved Rhubarb-like plant which we saw in Guernsey, Waterer says, is Gunnera scabra. You should consider whether it is not desirable to be used largely. It might prove unsatisfactory late in the summer. It is certainly very desirable at this season.

As I drive through the commons here and along the edges of the smaller streams and ponds, I often notice beautiful effects which results from the crowding together and the crowding down of certain common plants, all to be procured here in large quantities at small cost. For example gorse, hawthorne, brambles, sweet briar, ferns, nettles, and the white birch; the latter especially, where, by the browsing of donkeys or other accidents, it has lost its top and been led to thickly throw out new spray horizontally is often very effective, overhanging banks & shores. Most of these things are to be obtained here, in the form of hedge plants & seedlings, at very low prices by the thousand. Shortened in and planted near the water they would throw out early in the season very graceful and delicate sprays, fringelike, in pleasing combinations one with another and all with the willows and reedy & rushy plants that we have. I don’t know that we shall need them, but late in the season we may conclude that an improvement can be obtained by their use, and I suppose that they could be imported in the autumn and crowded in next spring.

Again, as I imagine the result of what we have done, I often think that a good deal might be gained if the reedy planting on the water’s edge could have an occasional echo of different forms of reed & rush-like plants to be seen over them on higher ground behind. This is a return, perhaps, to my old notion of introducing patches of cane or bamboo back of the rushes. Possibly Pampas grass would answer the purpose. There is here a plant, common in wet ground, which they call bulrush, apparently; but it is three or four times as tall as our bull rush.

I am more and more prepared to approve of considerable spaces of [531]plain turf, and more and more disinclined to much use of bedizening bedding plants, etc.

Lunching yesterday at Mr. Brice’s with a small company, most of whom had travelled in America, one said to me: “We should be making our plans now to go to Chicago next year, but for fear that we could not stay there any time comfortably except at very extravagant cost. I believe that all the tolerable inns are liable to be overfull even under ordinary circumstances, and I suppose that during the Fair the innkeepers will very greatly advance their prices.”

We have hardly spoken to anyone in France or in England, that dread did not appear of the difficulty and cost of getting from the seabord to Chicago and of finding lodgings there at reasonable prices. “It’s too far, and too difficult and too costly,” we are told. “Why it’s a thousand miles away after you have got to America. Is it not?” a man asked me the other day. Evidently imagining that the difficulty of getting from London over two or three lines, to a place 600 miles away, would be at least ten times multiplied, for one who wished to go from New York to Chicago. To the lady at Mr Brice’s who knew what American trunk lines are, I said that I believed that a canvas was now being made with a view to a classified list, so that, as visitors approached the city, agents would meet them and offer several grades of accommodations at prices not above those that are paid for corresponding grades at the different classes of hotels under ordinary circumstances. What arrangements are making to supply visitors with such meals as Englishmen are accustomed to have at their lodgings I could not say; but I knew that very large accommodations of Cafés and restaurants were being made on the Fair ground.

Thereupon I was advised that the sooner a full and accurate statement could be given here of what visitors could be sure that they would find in respect to lodgings and board, the larger would be the number of English visitors. People here often make their plans for a summer vacation long in advance and make them with more regard for comfort and for economy than is customary with Americans. Mr. Brice said that there is much curiosity now with all classes of Englishmen with regard to America, and the number, of those who would like to go there, if they were assured that they could do so without heavy cost or great discomfort, is very large.

I suppose I must admit that it appears now that you were right in thinking that I was travelling too fast and doing too much when in France. At least, with the access of the first period of hot, moist summer weather here, I am very much pulled down. But I do not feel that my reasoning was wrong. It was desirable that I should be enjoying the journey very much and be as diverted by it as I could without over strain. It was very undesirable that I should be thinking of myself and my infirmities and shaping my course and coddling myself with regard to them. It was best that I should be thinking of the young men and their education as well as of myself, and, altogether, as far as I understand my own condition, I think I pursued a perfectly sensible course. I can only conclude [532]now that I am older and more used up than I had supposed. I am making up my mind to leave out of the question a large part of what I had hoped to see and do in England. I have declined several invitations that I should have been very glad to accept.

I am more concerned now about how I shall meet the various conflicting requirements that will be coming upon me when I get home. I doubt whether, with the hot weather coming on, I shall be any more fit for long railway journeys than I was before I left, and of course this doubt is depressing. But I have enjoyed the journey very much and I think that if I should live a few years longer and be able to work, it will prove to have been very profitable.

Phil and Rick are having most valuable educational opportunities also, and I do not doubt that the profession will profit by what they will acquire from them.

The atmosphere here now gives the greatest possible charm to landscape in all conditions. I have been keeping my bed but it has been a luxury to look out of the window. Most likely, now, Phil and I will return by the Cunarder to Boston of the 9th June.

Yours Truly,