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bloomed yet. Father & I think that after all Cape Cod looks about as green as Warwick, & that the vegetation & vegetables are as forward. At any rate we have all kinds of summer vegetables except tomatoes & ours are full grown while Mrs Greens & Aunt Hamuts (The only one I have seen) were hardly out of bloom. Mrs. Greens hardly in-- I would like to have your blueberry pasture or one like it but then our commons & woods are covered with whortleberry bushes & Susan has brought me luscious and you need only go to the fields & transplant a few slips into some neglected corner of your garden & you are amply provided for. After all Cape Cod is no despicable place. Who are the richest Boston merchants, merchants famed for their honor & upright dealings? Cape Cod boys. Who The Captains & the hardy crews found in every port on every sea? Cape Cod boys. Who are the cheerful active wives. The nice cooks The neat housewives far off in the west the south the east in far Michigan & a Thousand miles from that? The Cape Cod girls

                        Perhaps you will think I paint Cape Cod in too bright colors, But if so it must please in extentation, that regard which it is both natural & proper to cherish for one's home though it be an adopted one. And the consciousness that it would be necessary to make out something of a case to oppose to the country whose merits are beautiful I am quite willing to allow. It would be unwise (to say the least) in me to exaggerate too much, since you have with you an eyewitness (though but in its dreariness & desolation) & you can any of you come & see for yourselves.
              I admire your beautiful trees of which alas we have so few. your neat villages hid away among the hills, the brooks running down their sides & even the hills themselves. Sometimes but in this case as in many others 'tis distance lends enchantment to the view!    I find on glancing over this hastily-written epistle that its chirography is a charming & truly original compound of mistakes erased and interlineations, & its ideas may be comprised under two prominent heads - ourselves & Cape Cod. Cape Cod & ourselves. These two ideas I have presented in as many difference way as the Rule of Permutation will permit or as if I had dropped them into a kind of mental kaleidoscope & shook them up.  'But", whispers that busy elf The ex-cusing spirit which speaks so often to us so seldom for others - what else is there to write about of which they know on Cape Cod & should we scorn such narrow bonds .

[left-hand side] and discourse of politics and the nation?_______ I see I am in danger of getting lost in the fog of egotism & losing myself in the sea of absurdity so we will hoist sail & away from the port from which we set sail There anchor settle up accounts with the crew and lay up, not forgetting to beg pardon for leading so long & tedious a voyage. See first page