Dear Coz:
If Miss Kupfer had not written me that she had written to you since our departure, I should have written earlier, but I knew she had told you of our safe arrival, and I thought I had then nothing of interest to say until I could tell you how I liked my surroundings. I have now been here seven weeks and find no occasion to regret coming. The place is simply beautiful in its location and surroundings, made up of hills and valleys under a high state of cultivation and taste.
The institution is larger and more flourishing than I had expected, with about three hundred patients, or persons as patients, and I think I never saw together any group of people that combines the degrees of intellect, general intelligence, and culture as is collected here. The speech of every person one meets is kind, charitable, and refined.
The faculty connected with the institution is, I should judge, skillful and competent, but the general means for promoting health through proper food, water, bathing, dress, rest, sunshine, open air, and pleasant surroundings are mainly relied upon; little or no medicines are ever used. I have neither seen nor heard of any being used by any person since I have been here; indeed, the great struggle and effort seems to be to get out of the patients the remnants of the medicines already taken in the past.
We have several excellent lectures in the hall during the week and services on the Sabbath. The Hall is so situated that all can attend. No change or addition of dress required, more than to go from one room to another. If one is not able to walk, he is carried if he chooses to be, and if one does not wish to sit up, he lies down and listens, so there is no getting weary, no exhaustion, no getting over-tired. One gets all the good without the bad.
The tables are excellent and most abundantly supplied. Meats plainly but well cooked, the freshest of vegetables from their own gardens, and such abundance of fruit as I never saw, all in its turn. We have passed through the era of strawberries and cherries and currants, and are now in the raspberries, white, red, and black. I believe the blackberries follow next, and so on to the peaches, pears, and apples of autumn, but the astonishing thing after their freshness and perfection is their abundance. They are not served to us in saucers, or on individual plates, but placed in large fruit dishes once in about three feet through all the scores of tables, each one to help himself over and over, the dishes being refilled to the last, and we leaving the tables filled as we find them. The fruit is mainly picked from the gardens that day for dinner, or the evening before for breakfast, from two hundred to four hundred quarts for a meal. Besides this we have always the greatest abundance of “Shaker” dried fruits cooked for those who cannot take the fresh. New milk from their own dairy (they have forty or fifty cows), all one can use at every meal; the freshest of oatmeals and grahams, sweet butter, tapioca, etc. The vegetables are largely cooked in milk, and harmless. With all these fruits and vegetables there is no summer complaint here. I have not heard of a case, and among all these invalid people not a person in bed, except a few rheumatics who were brought here in beds and are not up yet. No fevers, no colics, but all out and about in the sunshine, and on the Hillside’s stretchers and hammocks under the trees. One has only to be lazy and jolly and get well if they can.
There are a good many very pretty cottages outside the Main Institute where persons room, but all meet in the same dining-hall, and in the same parlor for prayers and singing after breakfast and the distribution of the mail after dinner. I am in the Institute, or main building. The views from the verandas are as fine as many I have heard extolled in foreign countries. A single glance takes in a stretch of the valley of over ten miles in length, as handsome as a landscape garden. We are so high above the town that we seldom walk, but there are always livery teams waiting orders at the door. One drives or is driven as the choice may be. Dr. Jackson has a stable of about twelve horses for his and family uses and the work. They are handsome enough for a fair, and I occasionally find that they are good roadsters. The village below us is pretty and thriving.
Miss Atwater lives in the village about a mile from me, but comes to lectures. She is well and seems very happy. I have ridden down to see her a few times. Her uncle is still with her. He had worked hard in his hotels for a great many years, been broken of his rest a great deal, and was considerably worn down, and seems to be glad of an opportunity to rest a little outside of a hot city. It makes it pleasant for Fanny till she gets more acquainted, but the people are very kind and social here. There is no stiffness.
There are something like fifty people employed as help to do the work of this Home, but not one servant; the word, nor position is not known here, all are treated equally, all ladylike and gentlemanly, all treated alike. There is an amusement society, and one of its features is a beautiful dance once a week from 5 till 8 P.M. Piano and violin music,—no round dances,—but cotillions and all dances which are not injurious, and the prettiest and most elegant dancers in the hall are from among the help.
There is a regularly organized fire company on the grounds, and the houses are watched and patrolled all night like a first-class manufactory. No doors are ever locked; all stand open if not too cold. I have never turned a key in the house. Now, I believe I have told you all the most important features of the place I have come to, but I have been very careful not to overdraw it, for I hope some of your journeys may sometime bring you to take a look at it for yourself, and I would not like you to be disappointed.