We returned from the East a couple of weeks ago, and are now getting
ready to leave for home. We are to sail from Southampton for New
York on the 31st. Of our visit to the Holy Land I write nothing now;
I may later, but life is uncertain. Of Egypt I might have written
more, but my notes are lost, as ill luck would have it, and I write
from memory. Had not those notes been lost--in some such way we used
to put it in boyhood's days when spinning sgialachan by the
fireside--this letter had been longer.