We reached Hyde Park last Friday afternoon and woke up Saturday morning to a gorgeous day. Nothing to do but catch up on bundles and bundles of mail, and prepare some speeches, but work, when you have no interruptions and when you can look out at the landscape and in at an open fire, does not seem like work!

We went out both morning and afternoon for good brisk walks in the snow, but found that we had to be prepared as we walked across the fields to go in every little while half way up to our knees.

We left Hyde Park reluctantly at two o'clock and spent a most thrilling afternoon. I had promised to give a trophy which my husband had presented to the Norway Ski Club for the winner of the tournament held by the Club at Beacon, New York. The setting is lovely with a wooded hill down which the slide and jump had been made. The contestants were all really very good jumpers. Just before we left one man jumped forty one and a half meters and the cup was won by one of the members of the Norway Ski Club, Olaf Aasen, who told me he had begun as a very little boy. I am afraid that those of us who did not begin as little children will have to give up all hopes of ever soaring like a bird from a high jump twirling our arms, then landing smoothly and scooting swiftly down the rest of the slide. It is fascinating to watch and I am very glad that more and more people seem to be taking to skiing. They tell me that people have been coming up all winter to Beacon and to many other places near and even far from the City.

We left at five o'clock and drove down reveling in a lovely sunset which turned the snow on the Bronx River Parkway a rosy pink at times. That Parkway is a joy except here and there where the gas stations and restaurant signs are reminiscent of the main highway. I never felt more keenly than I did today what a pity it is that we can not free the borders of our roads from these perpetual signs. They really spoil the landscape and somehow it seems our ingenuity should find a way to attract our attention to our wares without this particular type of advertising.