Please send me, direct, thro’ bankers, or to address in England that may be given you, as early as practicable, copies of any photographs that may be taken on the Estate. Those that I find here that have been taken since my last visit are of very little account, two or three only and not well selected as with reference to my concern. I should like others and more, such as I think I have already suggested as to subjects. But in fact any will be gratefully received and if I ask for a few in particular it is chiefly that I may see how our latest works in planting have got through the summer and may better judge what the ultimate effect is going to be. It may be of some value that I should be gratified in this respect, and as soon as practicable i.e. before the fall of the leaf.

And give me your impressions. I can get nothing out of John.

Good bye, again, dear boy, and my love to the McNamees; to Gall, Beadle and all inquiring friends. As long as I live I shall be glad to be hearing of them, and of the progress and fortunes of the undertaking.

The work that I am most anxious to secure careful detailed study for—such as I tried to specify & explain in my letter to Beadle, is that of the improvemt in various particulars of the planting of the Ram Branch Approach Road. The study given to that and the study of the results of the means used will, incidentally, be a school of study for the detail of the foregrounds—borders &c—of the Arboretum. This Approach Road improvemt calls for a great deal of nice study—study of details subordinately to general landscape character; the results of which will be vivacious but not eccentric or notably unnatural. Notably unnatural to the ordinary observer, however they may be to a botanist or a purist in horticulture (like Mr. Sargent). But I have written concerning this, perhaps, all I should. I can only say that as the time for revision of the work draws near, and as I am drawn away from it and realize more and more the finality of this withdrawal, the intenser grows my urgency to be sure that what I have designed is to be realized. I don’t think that there is anything monomaniacal in this. But possibly John’s reticence, tightness, uncommunicableness & apparent indifference to the points in which I have been most exercised and anxious, does affect me a little in that way. At any rate anything that you and Beadle can write me, of the progress & the means used in the elaboration & detailed improvemt of the Lower Approach will be a kindness to me. You may make a photograph or two showing me what you are doing.

The doctors wish me to think that I am to be cured. All this that I ask will help to that end. I need hardly say that the worst thing that can happen with reference to any gain that may be hoped is the impression that my influence at Biltmore is at an end; that what I had {hoped} to accomplish will fail.

As I said before, anything that you can give me to look for in England I shall regard gratefully.

Your affectionate father.

Get our address & send direct; not thro’ Brookline office; to that you can send duplicates.