To Miss Grace Norton

CHOCORUA, Aug. 29, 1902.

My dear Grace,—Will you kindly let me know, by the method of effacement, on the accompanying post-card, whether the box from Germany of which I wrote you some time ago has or has not yet been left at your house. I paid the express, over twenty dollars, on it three weeks ago, directing it to be left with you.

The ice being thus broken, let me ramble on! How do-ist thou? And how is the moist and cool summer suiting thee? I hope, well! It has certainly been a boon to most people. Our house has been full of company of which tomorrow the last boys will leave, and I confess I shall enjoy the change to no responsibility. The scourge of life is responsibility—always there with its scowling face, and when it ceases to someone else, it begins to yourself, or to your God, if you have one. Consider the lilies, how free they are from it, and yet how beautiful the expression of their face. Especially should those emerging from "nervous prostration" be suffered to be without it—they have trouble enough in any case. I am getting on famously, but for that drawback, on which my temper is liable to break; but I walk somewhat as in old times, and that is the main corner to have turned. The country seems as beautiful as ever—it is good that, when age takes away the zest from so many things, it seems to make no difference at all in one's capacity for enjoying landscape and the aspects of Nature. We are all well, and shall very soon be buzzing about Irving Street as of yore. Keep well yourself, dear Grace; and believe me ever your friend,

WM. JAMES.

To this word about enjoying the aspects of nature may be added a few lines from a letter to his son William, which James wrote from Europe in 1900:—

"Scenery seems to wear in one's consciousness better than any other element in life. In this year of much solemn and idle meditation, I have often been surprised to find what a predominant part in my own spiritual experience it has played, and how it stands out as almost the only thing the memory of which I should like to carry over with me beyond the veil, unamended and unaltered. From the midst of every thing else, almost, surgit amari aliquid; but from the days in the open air, never any bitter whiff, save that they are gone forever."