Dear Doctor,

I have been in the city now for several days but do not feel as brisk as ought to be expected after two months'enjoyment. Received your letter somewhere just after Aug. 15 when it was forwarded with the reading matter which you so kindly sent.

The essays on the identity of the British nation with the Lost Israelites increased my stock of information very much, although I must say that I was unable to appreciate the importance of the proof, or to agree with the author in his application of all the Scripture passages. However I intend to reread the Epistle again carefully. If it had not been for the magazine I should have been in a sad plight one day I spent on steamer with nothing to do, nothing to read & all alone with no one to speak to. Since I sent that grand literary effort of mine, which, by the by, I do not believe you half read, we were moving about from place to place, enjoying ourselves very much.

Crawford Notch is grand. Do not care to go to the White Mts.¹ again except to get those views once more. Stopped a few days over in North Conway--then went to a place called Igunquit, between Portland & Portsmouth. The house was on top of a high cliff, just set down on the rock, no foundation, & looked as if a puff of wind would send it over the rocks some hundred feet into the water below. The people were farmers & this was their first attempt keeping boarders & a very poor attempt it was but the rocks were grand, magnificent words fail! Great seas dashing against & over the bases sending clouds of spray forty feet high. We were out on the rocks all the time. But there was no beach except a little pebbly cove that stopped very abruptly. So that between the stones & the undertow a bath was not a luxury. One day we thought we would get behind a rock & wait for a wave to come up & flow over us. Well we did so & the water was so powerful that it took Miss McFarland & me off of our feet & was drawing us out when she screamed & Mr. Child caught us & held us until the wave had receded & then quickly dragged us up on the rocks. He & Miss Tobias were in a comparatively safe place for when the water went out again it would pull them out against a rock, but we were by a corner where there was a cut in the rock & the water running into it made a suction. My hand was badly cut grasping the edge of the rock & Cassie's was bruised. Was I frightened some. Went to York beach after that for the surf then back to the rocks. Have been to Mt. Desert.

Hope your health is still yet improving. Milk is good. You were right about Mary & Tom.

Good-bye. A.L.C. [Annie L. Cantrell]

¹ The White Mountains are part of the Appalachian system, N N.H. and SW Maine, rising to 6,288 ft (1,917 m) at Mt. Washington in the Presidential Range and to 5,249 ft (1,600 m) at Mt. Lafayette in the Franconia Mountains. Crawford Notch separates these two main groups. ("White Mountains." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6^th ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. www.bartleby.com/65/. Aug. 18, 2003.)