CHAPTER IX
Round-robin Letter to Mrs. Horace Allen's Neighbors and Friends in Belton, New Jersey
Mes Chére Amies:
Je vous demande pardon for being so late with this letter, I know I promised to write just as soon as we got here. But, chére amies, I know you would forgive me if you knew how marvelous our new life is here in this old, beautiful, civilized world. I have just been letting myself go in it, just grabbing at its charm and wonder, and all I can tell you is that Europe is even more wonderful than I thought. I just wish every one of you could persuade your husbands, as I did, to take a position that will bring you across the seas to this "fabled old land of story and art." You owe it to your children to give them the culture which they would get here.
But let me begin first with the material things. Mr. Allen, you know, felt sort of badly because the position here didn't seem to be as important and have as big a salary as the job the Company offered him in Chicago—Chicago! Well, you cannot imagine anything like the cheapness of the life here. We have two flats of six rooms each, on the same floor, just the landing between them, twelve rooms in all, furnished elaborately down to the last little things in the kitchen even, and we pay about half the rent we paid in Belton for our unfurnished house. There is perhaps a little old-world dinginess about the wall-paper and the curtains and things, but that only adds to the delightful atmosphere and makes you realize that you are really in old Europe and not raw young America.
We have two maids for less than three dollars a week each,
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