HYDE PARK, Sunday—After a busy day on Friday in New York City, I came up here yesterday. Just before Christmas there is always a great deal to do delivering parcels to everybody on the place and the people who are our near neighbors. Someday I hope that we shall be back here and able to have a Christmas party, where we shall be able to get together to enjoy the real Christmas spirit. That is impossible for the present, however, and all I can do is to be sure that everybody feels remembered at this time.

It seems queer, in winter, to be thinking about shipping seeds to England, but England can think about gardens earlier than we, I received a notice today that the New York Home Bureaus had sent more than $2,000 for the purchase of vegetable seeds to Mr. Donald Neville-Willing, who allows his home at 18 East 70th Street, New York City, to be used as headquarters for the committee working for American Seeds For British Soil.

Mrs. A. W. Smith, the state leader of the Home Demonstration Agents in New York, writes me that one dollar's worth of seed will provide enough vegetables for a family of five. I can only believe that the English are better gardeners than we, for I am sure that the vegetable seeds that I buy for my own use cost me far more. I am not, however, a very good gardener, even by proxy.

While I was in New York City, I stopped in at W. and J. Sloane, to see an exhibition of contemporary ceramics produced in our Western Hemisphere. This exhibition will go on tour to leading museums in the United States, when it closes at Christmas in New York City. Countries represented in the exhibition are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Iceland, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela. New York City artists are participating by doing work on the spot, which will, I am sure, be extremely interesting to others, as it was to me.

I give my broadcast from New York City this evening and take the night train back to Washington.