Mannish Madame Nevtaya slowly cried “Fur bowls!” and the Fideist batter, alert to the sense behind the sound of her words, jogged towards first base. The wind from the northern steppe blew coldly on the close of our season.

In August 1877 the celebrated conductor Jenö Szenkar, who six weeks earlier had gone to Graz to visit his friend the violinist Benno Bennewitz, and incidentally to perform with him the cycle of the Beethoven violin sonatas, left that city for Budapest, where he was engaged to conduct two operas at the summer festival.

The wealthy amateur Grent Wayl invited me to his New York house for an evening’s diversion. Welcoming me, he said: The check of our Bea! pointing to his niece, Miss Beatrice Fod, who, accompanied on the harmonium by her brother Isidore, sang to assembled guests.

This afternoon I went to the Beach to see a new hotel, the Brissy St. Jouin. It has been described as the “Naples ultra” of Miami splendor. 

There is, for me, even better news. (“Black oxen cannot tread on my feet forever.”) Mr. Hodge has proposed me for the Knights of the Spindle.

The day after I last wrote, Hodge called to say that Mr.Hood had left town for a few days; until he returned I should keep the briefcase. I had resisted tampering with the elegant box, but this evening I tried the clasp, which was unlocked. 

Do these lines perplex? So did your letter. What kind of explanation is this—your “trip to the country”! Doubt may be a good spur to the imagination, but you have abused and me.

In the gray light, a yacht, decrepit. Her varnished cabin sides are patchy and her white hull is stained with rust; her after deck, under a torn flapping canopy, is littered with cartons and refuse. A few 

Sea birds are aloft again, a tattered few. The bone white terns look dirtied in the somber light and they fly stiffly, feeling out an element they no longer trust. Unable to locate the storm lost minnows, they wander the thick waters with sad muted cries, hunting signs and sea marks that might return them to the order of the world.

We took the sailing skiff. There was no wind. In the light of the moon, I rowed Papa upriver on the incoming tide and on past Possum Key to the eastern bays.