influences of the grippe. Here we have, 
had a Father solder winter.than I have 
experienced before in Paris, with at 
times, curiously enough, almost as 
dense a fog as they have-on days in 
London that a Londoner oalls " fine." 
But now we feel the oomiagof spring 
in hha warm sun and in the swelling 
of the buds. 
We have been wall, and' not too muoh 
bsgripped, for there has been a great 
deal of "benign" grippe here,and wa 
cannot boaat complete escape. But for 
us both the great event is that we 
have actually finished our books. My 
brother did his last stroke on.his 
some few weeks ago,and X sent my last 
proof back, to the printer yesterday.So 
our parts are finished,though neither 
book will be really out for a little 
w h i 1 a yet. We have decided now bo, give 
ourselves a pretty long "vacation",for 
i 
we have been in Paris without a single 
day's absence for two years and a half, 
and very steadily busy during that time. 
So we are going to start off on a few 
month^s of travel in about a fortnight. 
We had at one time a .very fine plan of 
going to North Africa, which ia a popu¬ 
lar trip her® .just now, but we are rather 
too late in leaving to make that feasible, 
for we should want about two months there, 
and the end of our stay would fall in too 
hot weather for the travelling that we 
want to do. So we have decided to do what 
sounds less adventurous, b ut - *- - ^ - r n f ^ i 
whan wa came really t o ''face' North Africa, 
we concluded we should much prefer, spend 
the spring travelling about hither and yon 
in Franos,espsoially in Tourraine, Bur¬ 
gundy,and Provence,and than go down to 
Italy, where wa shall spend the greater 
part of the sdarner,probably most of it in 
Roms, wnioh we found so.pleasant in August 
three years ago,though that is not the 
month that people generally select for Home! 
