HYDE PARK, Monday—On Friday morning, bright and early, I started calling the railroad about the train coming in from St. Louis only to learn that it would be late. On subsequent calls I was told it would be later than originally expected. At any rate, I went up to Grand Central Station and, gazing up at the board with the listings of the incoming trains, I bumped into another lady. When I looked at her to apologize, I found she was an acquaintance waiting for her mother to arrive on the same train on which my grandchildren were expected. Finally, the train came in, and there they were, all of them looking well and happy. Of course, I was happy to see them.

We went home and then with my niece, Miss Amy Roosevelt, who happened to be spending a night or two at my apartment, the older children went off for a look-see at the shops, and some last-minute Christmas shopping. As soon as the little New York boy got home from school, the younger children started off for Hyde Park by car.

It had already begun to snow and as the rest of us went up on the train, the children kept looking out of the window hoping that there would be deep snow before they reached the country. I was silently hoping just the opposite, thinking of the children driving up and what hour they would arrive. We reached home from the train and had had supper before the car with the younger children arrived! They changed into a car with chains on it before they started to climb to the hilltop cottage which is their home.

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Saturday it rained, but the snow was deep enough so that the children could use their sleds and play in the snow. I took a long walk in the woods and watched my Scottie, who resents very much being a city dog, smell the rabbit trails and run off as far as he could. He couldn't go too far off the beaten track, however, because his short legs got bogged down in the deep snow!

Four gentlemen came up to spend part of Saturday with us. Two of them are young Hollanders who are now studying at Fordham University and who both were with the resistance movement throughout the war. The third, an Australian flyer whom I last saw in Cairns in 1943, is in America on business, and the other, Mr. Weir, has been with both the Red Cross and UNRRA in Europe and came to talk to me about what work might be done by the churches now in the displaced persons camps.

The children joined us at lunch and after lunch went on with their snow enterprises while I took the others over to the big house and the library. At last one can go through on bad days at least with a certain amount of quiet, and, while I regretted the gray and rainy day, I realized that my quests would see far more than if they came in beautiful weather. The Dutch boys kept saying it reminded them of Holland, and I think they enjoyed being out in the country even though none of them was dressed for rugged, country weather and could not enjoy a walk in the rain!