There were many things about which I wanted to take counsel with you before Harry left again for Chicago and I for Carolina. Some we had talked over in your absence and the question when we agreed had been will John agree with us? There had been no chance for confidences during the morning and there were some matters that I had it in mind to talk over with you at lunch. I was surprised when I went out to find that you had been before me & had left the table but it did not suggest itself to me that you could go to town without any further talk with me. After lunch I looked thro’ all the rooms for you and then sat waiting for you. I wanted that you shd get some information & telephone it to me in town. I had talked with you about what you would do in town but it was not at all like a final talk and I supposed that you would come to me for that. I was still waiting for you to turn up when Harry came to me holding a bit of paper, saying “‘Tis not possible John has gone off not intending to come back today, is it?” “No, I don’t think so.” “But see here; this looks like it, doesn’t it?” and he showed me the memorandum that he had just found on his desk, left by you. “It looks like it does not it,” he repeated “but surely he would not think of such a thing, would he?” “He might. It’s not unlike him. It’s an idiosyncracy. I have often told him so but he cannot realize it.” “I have noticed something of the kind,” said Harry. “He goes off to visit a place and when he comes back says nothing about it.” [As if what he found, said and did was no concern of ours]. “Yes,” I said, “he does so sometimes, of course without the slightest consciousness of the impropriety or wrong of it.” “Of course not, said Harry, but it is awkward.”

Can you not see that awkward is a very charitable term for it, in such a case as this?

[207]

When I was at Mt Desert & Harry at Newport on our common business, you go off also on our business to New Jersey, leaving a note for me in which you say that you have it in mind after you return to go to Deer Isle for your pleasure. But in the meantime many things have occurred & Harry & I discussing them have provisionally determined various courses. Among others that he goes for an undetermined time to Chicago to accomplish certain results—empowered, as far as I am concerned, in certain contingencies, to resign our appointment there and in certain others to call me there from Biltmore, and proceed with the planning in connection with the Architect & Engineer. He agrees with great reluctance to go, setting aside & giving up engagements, which he had set his heart upon. And I agree with even greater reluctance, as a duty to the firm, to go to Biltmore subject to call to go thence to Chicago. It never for a moment came to the minds of either of us that under these circumstances you wd think of going to Deer Isle. That you should think of going without any conference about it with us it was difficult for us to think possible. Nor did we fully entertain the idea even after reading your note again and again, till Henry came back and reported that he had taken you to the steamer. So little had I thought such a thing possible that I had two packages ready to send to Mother that it did not occur to me that I shd ask you to take.

I don’t know whether I ought to write about it to you. I don’t know that it does not do more harm than good. But you are so sensible and so good in respect to the business in other ways that I cannot believe that common sense & common honesty is impossible to you in this. What would you think if Harry & I should treat you as you treat us? If I should treat him or he treat me as you treat each of us? What would become of our business? It is not a question of propriety or of manners simply. It is a question of justice, of dealing with the property of others honestly.

I am ashamed to be lecturing you again about it. Of course you see that if there had ever been the slightest particle of real anger I should have held my tongue about it long ago. It is only because I have pride in you that I keep up the ding-dong. But this time it is the complication of a third partner—not of the family—that moves me to urge once more that you try to be more open & confiding in affairs that are not wholly yours; try to keep this unhappy propensity to seal yourself up under better restraint.

I should not think of going to Biltmore under the circumstances if it was not evident from McNamee’s telegram and from Gall’s last letter & telegram that things are about to go wrong there & can only be set right by a visit. The meeting to be held in Chicago Tuesday night and the employment of a strange engineer and his undertaking to do what we said it was impossible to do and refused to do makes Harry’s visit there indispensible. Such at least has been after much talk our reluctant conclusion. Otherwise one of us certainly wd stay till your return & if practicable longer.

There are various matters that greatly call for attention in the East. We are still neglecting the call to lay out 200 acres at Short Hills, on the way to [208]Madison; that from Long Isld; we ought to be at the bottom of the Mausoleum wind tower, & we know Croes will be shiftless unless personally pushed. I suppose you will visit Princeton when you go to Trenton. You can drive across, taking a look at Lawrenceville on the way. It is very desirable to make a favorable impression on the Princeton people, very desirable that we shd be the continuous L. A. of that great rich institution with alumnae of influence {in} all of the Union. If you don’t make an appointment, you might write saying that I have been called off on a long journey & will attend to it as soon as I can.

Harry says there is much trouble in the office—If it appears soothing applications are required; or persuasive appeal to good judgment & good feeling.

Yours affctly