(Copy)
STANDARD
Austerlitz, New York

July 28, 1925.

Dear Friends:

Ugin has just gone off in the Egg-beater to Albany
to sell a load of crated huckleberries, and Freddie has to do the
dishes, because as you must know, Julia---no, no, not Mrs. Hitch-
cock; Mrs. Hitchcock insisted on our eating in the kitchen and
drinking for our supper cold tea left over from her breakfast;
Mrs. Hitchcock went some time ago, and paid an aimless passer-
by twenty-five cents to carry her hand-bag from the sidewalk to her
front door because Ugin who had brought her home in state in the
Maxwell was so ungentlemanly as to suggest that she carry her bag
herself; no, no, this is the big nigger Julia, who went crazy last
night and ran roaring out into the yard to confide to the masons
that she had heard us plotting to hang her from a rafter,---Mr.
Crosby very kindly pulled her off us and put her aboard a train
for Philadelphia, so Freddie has to wash the dishes. And a hard
enough time he has of it, too, poor lad, what with Vasco and Al-
bino and Angelo and Helena and Martina and Dunice and Alice and
Gino and Gialindo and Emilio all the time running down the hill
with great pails of berries to be measured and boxed and crated.
(You will note that Joseph is no longer among them. Joseph pissed
in the berries, so we don't employ him any more.)

We have very little gin left. It takes about all we can get
from day to day to keep Crosby laying brick. Fortunately the chim-
ney, the big one, is finished, and the three handsome fire-places
won't smoke so much--at least they say so, through their tears and

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thrusting their faces very close to the floor to get a nose-ful of
draught from under the door---won't smoke so much when the cement is
dry. But of course the chimney for the incinerator isn't even start-
ed yet, and the tiles haven't arrived yet for the bath-room, and
though the septic tank was sealed last night at the precise moment
when Julia lost her mind, there's a lot of work still for Crosby to
do and the gin is very low. One is to be congratulated that Kline,
who sold us this excellent apple-jack---he makes it himself---is
himself a teetotaler, and is most industrious and capable, too, con-
sidering that one of his hands got crushed one day in a cement-mixer;
Kline's only weakness is that he insists upon addressing Freddie as
Freddie. Altair has a very cute bark now, which he tries out once
in a while. He tried it out on me yesterday, but he is to be ex-
cused, for he had been asleep under my desk all the afternoon in my
study up in the field, and I stepped suddenly through the doorway
out of the soft grass and wakened him. He refused his cod-liver oil
last night. When Ugin held out the spoon he turned his head away
and gently threw up. Ugin says it was the smell of the cod-liver
oil. I say it was because Julia had washed the spoon. At any rate,
Smoky doesn't mind him any more so much as she did, though she
still puts her back up a bit at the sight of him. Smoky is a great
comfort. She follows me even to the privy, and waits for me, and
purrs and purrs.

The kitchen plumbing, you will be glad to hear, is all con-
nected, even to the set tubs, and the guest bath-room nearly so,
and the servants' lavatory and seat---we decided after all to post-
pone the installation of our individual bath until the dormer win-
dows are in and the installation of the dormer windows until the
terrace is laid and the laying of the terrace until the swimming

pebb
XXX

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pool is dug and the digging of the swimming pool until we get money enough to buy some cocoa-butter against sunburn. The only trouble with our plumbing is that we have no water, Frank having left the ditch half plowed and the blow by the ditch, to run home on the first sunny day and start haying, and Timmy Callahan having deceived us shamefully concerning the four Italian workmen he was going to lay off this week from dumping gravel on the Great Barrington Road. So we all took a bath in the brook, at least all but Ugin, who got lost trying to collect fifty cents apiece from the dozens of people who come in motor cars and camp on our land and steal our berries. Any-way, Deems and Freddie and I took a bath in the brook, and I made them give me up-stream because I was cleaner.

The Mercer is still in Glen Falls. But we got along very well with the Maxwell and the Eggbeater. Of course, we hadn't intended to buy a new car so soon, though everybody had told us we could never use the Mercer in the winter, an open car, and too heavy for these roads, and all. So it really happened just right, as it afterwards appeared, the Mercer burning a bearing in Glens Falls and having to be left there to wait for a new block to be sent for and put in, and we had wired Arthur and Gladys that we should be in Lake Placid by midnight, and there was no train, and we had to get a closed car some time, anyway. The Maxwell is a coupe, and exceedingly lady-like and quiet and polished and beautiful. To be sure, it holds only Ugin and me, but most of the time there isn't anybody except Ugin and me, what with Mrs. Hitchcock making us eat in the kitchen and Julia going mad on us. And it isn't as if the Mercer wouldn't be showing up most any day now, with his tail between his rear tires.

We have quite a lot of flies. It's hard to keep the doors closed in a house that isn't finished yet. But the nine Polish dogs haven't broken into the spring-house for a long time.

Dear Artie and Gladys: It is drweadful, but I don't think we will be able to come and see you. Vincent has been a sick girl for the last three months. She has been pretending not to be sick and would work and then have to stay in bed for days. She has had a headache and spots before her eyes for the last four months, and I am dreadfully unhappy about her. She will not go to New York to see a docter. I have now finally got her to promise me to take a rest here. She is not going to do anything but rest and try and get well. That may help her. May be it are her nerves, and that she has done too much. Let me know when Gladdy expects to go to New York. May be, if it is all right with Gladys, I could persuade her to go to New York with Gladys and see Docter Goodrich.

What is the good of the house, ghe scenery, the beauty, the apples and pears and the ripening tomatoes if Vincie is feeling rotten? What's the good of anythin' We have been to a docter in Great Barrington and Pittsfield, and they say everythi is fine with her as far as they can see, but te recommendation to see another speciali If we only could find out what was the matter wihhe her. Well, so we have decided that it would be foolish to go to Saranac Lake, and so we are not coming, and so we are dreadfully unhappy and two <u>un disappointed</u> children. Write us where you are going to, and when you are going and how. May be you will not do the whole journey to New York in one day and if you cannot stop here, you will have to stop somewhere, and then we might be able to come and see you. I wish we could meet some here. Just to stick our tongs out at each other. I know it would do Vincent no end of good and absolutely dito dito for