ilettes-The Dining-room-Pictures-Ida and Gabriel

ne

nce last fall, and now we have all settled to our different occupations, and

bituated to the luxury of breakfasting in bed, from residence abroad and in the tropics. Not that we breakfast in bed at the "Villa Greeley," however; we are muc

eakfast at least two hours earlier. How can you

at. I find it, however, very poetic and delightful to listen to the matins of the robins, thrushes, and wrens, from my pillows; a

rbed by visitors. At seven, however, I used to meet with an interruption from my German professor. Poor man! I now pity his old rheumatic limbs stumbling over the ice and snow to be with me at that unreasonable hour of the morning. But I then was ruthless, and would not allow him even five minutes grace, for my time was then regulated like clockwork,

hair brushed off plain from our faces, and flowing loosely à la belle sauvage, or in cool braids, is the order of the day. Even Marguerite, who is the most conventional of our quartette, has conformed to the fashion reigning here, and no longer coiffed in the stylis

ove and the house in the woods. We have several pictures on the walls-first a portrait of my dear uncle; a boyish face with fair hair, deep blue eyes, and an expression angelic in sweetness. No one would imagine it to be the face of a married man, but it was painted, mamma says, when he was thirty years old. Two large and admi

sofa is a copy of Liotard's celebrated pastel "la belle Chocolatière" in the Dresden Gallery. This copy Aunt Mary bought in that city when there some years ago, and it is consider

is my f

her. She is very different, however, from the chocolate vendors whom I have seen in the streets of Paris. I don't think a nobleman would ever r

ar which delicious wild strawberries nestle in a background of sweet clover, brigh

sun has dri

to our own room, and ou

tion: The

a volume for publication in the fall-her de

ess I often seize a print or bombazine frock, thrown, as I suppose, carelessly upon the bed or sofa, and only by its weight do I discover that it is animated. Last year, Gabrielle's

n, Musikalische M?rchen, and I divide my time bet

write, and much reading aloud. I have two books in progress-Plato's "Dialogues," and Madame de St?el's incom

d a sacrifice." What could be more delicious than a game of croquet, or a drive in the cool twilight? But Chappaqua, lovely though it is, possesses a malaria that is dangerous after sunset, th

e in the routine of a pensionnat, for the hour devoted to it must be taken from one's recreation time, or from some other lessons. Our friends will remember, too, that dear Ida was taken out of school while yet very young, to become the devoted nurse that she has since shown herself to her mother, and from the time she left the Sacr

and Latin, rather than the Rhythme des Doigts and the Ecole de la