I enclose copy, for your private information of a letter to Gall (in which is another for Mr McNamee). Look out as far as you judiciously can that every facility is prepared for a final review of our plans at critical points. [901]See, also, that your mother and sister are going to be comfortable at the Forester house, i.e. if you can without exciting jealousy or making yourself a Miss Nancy.

There are some matters, more especially the nursery arrangements, (what we can depend upon with reference to provision of shrubs a year or two hence, for example) about which I feel myself to be a little less clear-headed than I ought to be. The uncertainty of Mr McNamee’s position and as to what can be expected in the way of plant and other preparation, has been disconcerting and perhaps my memory is a little weak. I mean that you shd be prepared to give me a little guidance if you find that I need it. To this end you should have reviewed all the work in progress and found out what the calculations & expectations of all the Superintendents are, as far as convenient. I say this, as pretty much everything else, with reference to what is desirable for your own education. I want you to be as fully as possible en rapport with every directing mind on the estate and as fully posted up at all points as possible. You must make yourself an advanced ’prentice Superintendent, but with a better standard of a Superintendent’s duties, and more especially of a Superintendent’s information of what has been done, of progress and of what is to be done & a general mastership of the whole situation than Superintendents’ often have.

We are well but with Grippe about us—in Mr. Eliot’s family, for example. Dead winter with deep snow & continued good sleighing. A good deal of embarrassment in park-affairs because of questions of available funds & consequent difficulties of laying out & pursuing well-studied policy & plans.

Affectionately