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NEW YORK, Dec. 9, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,—I haven’t had a line from you since I wrote you last, but according to promise I write at once to tell you about my visit to the Stanwoods.

I went there last night. They live on the top of Murray Hill, just off Madison Avenue. It’s a fine house, what they call a four-story, high-stooped, brownstone mansion. The door was opened by a man in a swallow-tail coat, and he showed me into the sitting-room, saying they hadn’t quite finished dinner yet—and it was almost eight o’clock! That shows you how different things are here in New York, don’t it? The sitting-room was very handsome, with satin furniture, and hand-painted pictures on the walls, and a blazing soft-coal fire. There were magazines and books on the center-table, some of them French.

In about ten minutes they came in, Mr. Stanwood and his daughter; and they begged my pardon for keeping me waiting. Then Mr. Stanwood said he was sorry but he had to attend a committee meeting at the club. Of course, I was for going, too, but he said to Hester—that’s Miss Stanwood’s name; pretty, isn’t it?—she’d show me the photographs. So he stayed a little while and made me feel at home and then he went.

He’s a widower, and his daughter keeps house for him; but I guess housekeeping’s pretty easy if you’ve got lots of money and don’t care how fast you spend it. I felt a little awkward, I don’t mind telling you, in that fine room, but Miss Stanwood never let on if she saw it, and I guess she did, for she’s pretty sharp, too. She sent for the photographs; and she gave me a wholly new idea of the Holy Land, and she told me lots of things about their travels abroad. When you called her the Gilt-Edged Girl I suppose you thought she was stiff and stuck up. But she isn’t—not a bit. She’s bright, too, and she was very funny the way she took off the people they’d met on the other side. She isn’t as good a mimic as you, perhaps, but she can be very amusing. She’s very well educated, I must say; she’s read everything and she’s been everywhere. In London two years ago she was presented to the Queen—it was the Princess of Wales, really, but she stood for the Queen—and she isn’t set up about it either.

So I had an enjoyable evening in spite of my being so uncomfortable; and when Mr. Stanwood came back and I got up to go, he asked me to come again.

Now I’ve told you everything, as I said I would, so that you can judge for yourself how fortunate in having made friends in a house like Mr. Stanwood’s. You can’t help seeing that, I’m sure.

JACK.