Ah, my darling, if you could only be along, to-day! Never, never never was such a marvelous winter journey! For an hour or two we have been skirting Lake Champlain, & the landscape is too divinely beautiful for language to describe. You look miles & miles out over the frozen snow–white floor of the Lake, with the dazzling sun upon it, & huge c hasel blanket–shadows of cl the clouds gliding over it, & here & yonder a black speck on the remote level (a sleigh), & away on the far further shore a dim & dreamy range of mountains rises gradually up & disappears in a ragged, low-hanging leaden curtain of clouds.

We have left the Lake, now, & are among rolling farms, clothed to the fence-tops with the blindingest white snow, & on every hand in the distance rise rugged mountains mottled with dark forest–patchesⒶemendation & frothy fields of snow, all softened & enriched with a purple haze—& then the mountain–summits! they are as vague & spectal, away up there in the sky, as if they you saw them through a veil of summer rain.

I send a toboggan for the children. They better not try to use it till I come.

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I will send a pasteboard box, to-night, which must close remain closed till I come. It is for the children. I bring you something myself by hand—I may possibly send it by express.

I love you, sweetheart.