MUNICH.

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ALL the world has been at its busiest getting ready for Christmas, and the amount of knitting and embroidery is overwhelming. I pity eyes. Even the blind do the most wonderful knitting. I was at the Blind Asylum not long ago. There were drawers and drawers full of tidies, caps, stockings, drawers, etc. Some of their customs are rather startling just now. Sunday is never very different from other days, except in the church services. The shops are kept open till late in the afternoon. All the world goes to church, and then to the military parade, and to hear the band play in one of the public squares, and then to shop! At home, the afternoons and evenings are spent in fancywork of whatever kind may be on hand, or in games or dancing. The last three weeks, our young ladies have embroidered indefatigably all Sunday, except when at church or shopping. I am sure I don’t like this custom; but Christmas is a grand festival in Germany, you know, and I suppose itwould be heart-breaking not to make the most ample preparations. The last two days, cooking has been the duty of the frau-mother. She prepares all her cake, but sends to a regular baker to have the baking done. You ought to have seen the display when it came home! They were brought on great table-tops (I don’t know what else to call them). On one I counted thirteen immense loaves; on another as many or more. All were nicely iced, or dusted with sugar, and they looked very inviting. The baker says no one sends him such rich batter as our frau—so full of almonds, citron, etc. One of the young ladies made “a whole lot” of almond macaroons. They are delicious. What an experience this, of spending Christmas in a German household! We are having a real homelike Christmas-time. A beautiful tree—all of us were called on to help adorn it. Our presents are not wanting. I received a pocket-handerchief embroidered by the oldest daughter, an apron embroidered by the second, and a beautiful satin glove-box embroidered and made by the third, Gretchen. The mother gave me a copy of the “Niebelungenlied” in German, and a great waiter of all kinds of “goodies,” to be kept in my own apartment. But the best gift of all was the warmheartedness.Christmas night, I was at the grandest concert I ever attended: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and a new thing, “Christoforous,” a legend of the Christ-child, arranged in solos, choruses, and for the orchestra. I think it was the first time it has been given here. Jammed house; spell-bound audience; all kinds of people, and toilets to match, from the most superb and fashionable to the very plainest.

It is impossible to live in this wonder city and not find each day adding to one’s admiration for its kings. The most ardent republicanism cannot withhold this. Their munificent public spirit, grand conceptions, fine taste, good judgment, energetic execution, and practical improvements are made manifest in every direction. Bavaria, and especially this, its capital city, have been subjected to much criticism and no little ridicule on account of their so-termed pretentious development—their egotism in attempting to rival Athens and Rome in the style and magnitude of their public buildings; their “towering ambition,” as displayed in the number and size of their art works; all being regarded as quite out of proportion to its insignificant limits and lack of importance as a political factor in the nations of Europe. But whatever creates business attractspopulation, adds to the prosperity and increases the revenues of a country; and this is surely no contemptible desideratum in its political economy. That these results have been accomplished here is shown by the census. Bavaria became a kingdom in 1806; Munich is the capital, you know; its population in 1840 was about 40,000; in 1850, 100,000; in 1870, 170,000; the last census, it was over 230,000, and gaining all the time. In every direction, new streets are being laid out, new buildings are going up, old ones are being repaired, and the entire city gives the impression of rapid growth and increasing prosperity, all improvements being of the most substantial and imposing character.

The reigning house of Wittelsbach dates from 1180. It has ruled under the titles, duke, elector, one emperor and king; that of duke till 1623; the one emperor, Elector Charles Albert becoming Emperor Charles VIII from 1726 to 1745. Maximilian Joseph succeeded as elector in 1799, holding that title till 1805, when he was invested with that of king—“Maximilian I, King of Bavaria.” The present king is his great-grandson. In otherwise idle hours, I have had the curiosity to make a kind of catalogue of the public work of these rulers. You see,when one is driving or walking in a strange city, the questions are apt to come “in battalions.” In my first drive, the finest streets and buildings evoked some such questions and answers as these: “What street is this?” “Ludwig Strasse, planned and built by King Ludwig!” “What building is this?” “The Royal Library, also built by him.” And so on till I became quite bewildered by the many magnificent structures and institutions of his creation, or of other kings. But I have continued to question, read, and keep count, till I feel quite familiar with these kingly monuments, and have taken much interest in my “busy idleness.”

Maximilian I founded new suburbs: the general hospital which I have visited and inspected closely, and cannot praise too much, a riding school, observatory, and the celebrated bronze foundry, much patronized by the United States. His crowning honor to me is that he was the first German prince who granted a representative government to his people. Ludwig I, his son and successor, began his extraordinary career as patron and lover of art while yet crown prince. His works abound in such numbers, splendor and variety, it is difficult to realize themas the creations of one person, one lifetime. Of course you are familiar with the character of the most, if not all, but perhaps have never taken the trouble to do this little sum in addition. So I shall only mention the names: the Glyphothek Exhibition Building, Propilae, Old Pinakothek, New Pinakothek, Royal Library, University, Bronze Foundry, Stained Glass Manufactory, Konigsbau, Festaalbau, Ludwig’s Kirche, Basilica, Maria Hilf, Royal Chapel, Ludwig Strasse, Feldernhalle, Bavaria, Walhalla, Temple of Liberation—the last two near Ratisbon—Pompaianeum and Donan, Marie Canal, besides many statues and monuments, such as the obelisk on the Carolinenplatz, cast in metal from conquered cannon. His son, Maximilian II, reigned from 1848 to 1864. His attention and efforts seem to have been principally directed to the advancement of science, though he was not behind in the beautifying and practical development of the city. To him it owes the Cornmarket, the Crystal Palace, Railway Station, Old Winter Garden, Lying-in Hospital, Physiological Institute, Maximilian Strasse, Riegerung, Bavarian National Museum, Maximilian Bridge, or rather two bridges in one over the Isar, Maximilianeum, Gasteig Park, etc.; certainlysufficient evidence that his comparatively short reign of sixteen years was not frittered away. This king must have been noble, indeed, and specially qualified for a great and good ruler; such affection and reverence cling to his memory. Only last week I read a most touching reminiscence of him recalled by his physician and spiritual father, Dr. R. von Reindl, who was one of the few present in attendance when the king was on his death-bed. At five o’clock of the day he died, in the morning, the great bell of the Frauen Kirche was rung to summon all Munich to pray for the sick monarch. Hearing it in his sick-room, he asked, “Dear Reindl, what holy day is this?” “Sire,” he replied, “the Bavarian people are praying for their king.” He spoke again: “Ah, am I so near my end? Well, I am ready. I have always wished the best for my people, and never intentionally injured anyone. I ask forgiveness from all.” There is something sublime in such an exhibition of resignation and humility. He was not yet fifty-four years of age, and in the prime of his powers and usefulness. Among the many monuments of Munich, his, at the end of Maximilian Strasse, is the grandest and most imposing.

He stands in his coronation robes, holding the charter, on a pedestal of granite and syenite, around which are beautiful figures representing Peace, Religion, Justice and Strength. It bears the simple, perfect inscription, “Erected by his faithful people.”

The present king, Ludwig II, has, it is said, carried out some of the plans of his father, and is as much given to building castles as was Charlemagne. Doubtless you are familiar with his reputation for eccentricity, as it has a world-wide publicity. So extreme has been its exhibition, it has obtained for him the title of “the mad king.” It is difficult to get a fair estimate of him; but if he is mad, there is, like Hamlet’s, “method in his madness.” He held his own against the Kaiser in the adjustment of United Germany; would not be swallowed by the whale, though he was such a little fish. He works daily for hours on state matters, and signs no papers without his full personal examination. He is credited with being so shrewd that neither his ministers nor others can get the advantage. “No fooling him to the top o’ his bent.” He is kind-hearted and benevolent—gave forty thousand marks, against the Kaiser’s fifteen thousand, to the recent sufferers from the inundations; andhe seems to keep watch for, and is swift to reward, any special exhibition of merit in science or art. All this on the one hand; on the other there is quite as much. He lives his own life, regardless of everything but his own will and tastes. He absents himself from his capital. He lives alone, leading a singularly isolated life—he would seem to be a misanthrope. He does the most anomalous things. Here is a specimen: one of his residences (Residenz is the name of the royal palaces here), six miles from the city, is interesting for its pictures and extensive and fine grounds. He spent some weeks there last summer, and won the idolatrous worship of the villagers and country folk around, by mingling with them and treating them with the utmost kindness. One of the picture galleries is called “the Gallery of Ancestors,” its walls being hung with portraits of five hundred of the Wittelsbach house. Well, he ordered a magnificent banquet laid in this gallery, calling it “the feast of the ancestors;” a plate for each and a tall wax candle for each; and he spent the night at table, the only living guest and banqueter!

It is to be hoped the long line of unsubstantial shadows of the house of Wittelsbach were able to appreciate the honor conferred on them.In personal appearance, he has been an extraordinarily handsome man; tall, a head and shoulders above most men; symmetrical, of superb, real kingly bearing; with a finely shaped head, rich masses of brown hair, and splendid, large, dark, expressive eyes. I have seen fine portraits of him at different periods from seventeen or eighteen years of age till now. In all, he is a strikingly handsome man. He was here the first of November, after an absence of six months; remained two weeks. I saw him twice in his carriage. He is growing exceedingly stout—too much so for my taste—but still shows what he has been. What sharp-tongued Frenchman was it who said, “un homme d’esprit meurt, mais n’engraisse pas?” How much more applicable to looks than wit!

Oh! I must not forget to tell you that this puzzling king is a poet and a man of varied and most exquisite taste. I have the promise of seeing a little volume of his poems, a very few copies of which have found their way into the hands of the officers of his household, friends of these German friends with whom I am domiciled. They are said to be full of a melancholy sweetness and pathos. His taste is shown in the furnishing as well as in the architecture of his palaces. Everythingfrom the draperies to the tiniest bit of bric-a-brac in every apartment, in all these palaces, he has built or is building, is from his own designs. Those who have been fortunate enough to see them rave over their rare and wonderful beauty and richness. Will you begin to think, “Isn’t that all; can there be anything more?” I have not told the best! This strange, shrewd, “mad” Bavarian king has a spotless reputation. With so much that is admirable, might it not be hoped that in the course of time, the eccentricities will disappear and the “fittest survive?” The prominent feature in summing up these Bavarian kings is their unselfishness. Mere selfish gratification seems to have had no place in their lives. All their faculties, energies, time, revenues and efforts were devoted to a beneficent development and improvement of their realm. Such men should rule whether “born to the purple or not.”

So endeth my letter on the kings. Sometime I may take you with me to their palaces. We can go whenever we wish; so can the humblest subject in their kingdom. I saw on last Saturday one, thin and old, and poorly clad, standing before a picture in one of the royal corridors leading from the Cologne suite to thestate apartments. She seemed to be enjoying it quite as much as I was. She had her market basket on her arm and was on her way home: it was full. All she had to do was to make choice of her church, or her king’s palace, or she may have gone to both; each was alike open to her. How much the graciousness of such custom is to be commended!

L. G. C.

Munich, January 2, 1883.

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HERE is your first letter in the new year. I have been giving you a rest. I did a little sum in arithmetic myself, and that addition of letters looked so formidable it drove me into sandwiching this interval. Has the experiment been satisfactory, do you ask? Only in proving to myself that I can be unselfish. I had a friend in Philadelphia once who had the scathingest tongue. He used to say: “All women like and seek more or less martyrdom.” Maybe and maybe. I know I said to myself: “He has to answer all those. Think of such a tax! Because you are away from home and yearn so for news, you have been thoughtless. He has many correspondents; he has much to do. Think of how you may be interfering! Perhaps he sits up o’ nights, or heralds the dawn to get you in. If—but never mind how. Your conscience has been stirred; you’ll be good; you are penitent; you’ll bring forth works meet for repentance; you’ll give him a rest!”

I have been good. I’ve done my penancebeautifully. I know I have, for I feel like—an archangel. But—look out for the next three weeks! It will be anomalous perfection of conduct if I do not, like the most exemplary, “reformed drunkard,” give this self-imposed restraint a treat a day! Best be looking around for a bookkeeper—graduate of Bryant Commercial College—to help foot up the columns then! And what a quick transit you will make into the beauties of multiplication—how the twenties will multiply! Oh! I can tell you, if you are going “to keep count” on me, I’ll see to it you’ll have enough to do. Now, aren’t you scared? Your letter is beautiful—a prose poem! I know one when I come across it. Did you ever read “Prue and I?” One passage, that about your Spanish castle, recalls “My Chateaux.” I kept that for years where I could turn to it and read it over and over again. A little less, and your letter might have slipped alongside. If you had only not been as poetical over that Thanksgiving turkey and pudding! How could you substitute them for “nectar and ambrosia?” Yes, I may submit gracefully to the “durance vile” of your Spanish castle; may lean from its windows, meeting more than half-way the smell of thepoppies—to be steeped in blissful forgetfulness by it! but not shackles of adamant; not

“The wind-blown breath of the tossing flower;”

or,

“the scent of the sweet tuberose,The sweetest thing for scent that blows;”

or,

“Nord and cassia’s balmy smells.”

No; not anything of all the sweetest and strangest lures and fetters you know can ever get me into your Paradise, with its Thanksgiving turkey every day. Goodness! what a material creature is your being of two hundred avoirdupois! How different your Paradise is from mine, which is

“a fairy visionOf those gay creatures of the elementsThat in the colors of the rainbow liveAnd play i’ the plighted clouds,”

and who share the feasts of humming-birds, butterflies, and gold fishes. Ah! you have never split honeysuckle bells for those dainty drops of honey in their depths! You have never hovered over the spiced fumes of pinks! If you wish for an apotheosis, to be caught up into a more etherial sphere, get a vase of gold fishes and watch how they live on air, and learn “how much too much” the lord of creationeats. Ihave one—here in a vase set in a thicket of tropical plants—the prettiest creature! I call him my “Flash of Gold.” He goes for a week at a time on just “air, thin air,” filtered through the pellucid element in which he sports or that element itself. His health, activity, grace and symmetry are simply perfect. Thank you for the little gem, “Summer Love.” I have done your bidding, read it and read it again. It is worth it “for passionate remembrance’ sake.” I made acquaintance with your friend “a many years agone” through another little poem, which is still in the portfolio I left behind. It was avade mecum, and as sacred as if it had been written for only me. I miss it now occasionally and wonder how I overlooked it. I never have seen him—the author, “who builded better than he knew”—I hope he has not killed his boys with such weight of names. To bear them, they should have stuff to send them “a pitch beyond the flight” of common men. I wish youhadgone to A—— P——’s wedding; then you could have told me all about it, and, besides, given me all the old town’s gossip. When you choose, do you know, you can furnish forth “a capital dish of that cate!” And who doesn’t like it? Even Carlyle gives us leave:“Gossip springing free and cheery from the human heart is infinitely better than inane, grey haze.” I am quite satisfied about “the other side of the river” since your last. Remember, it came after my letter of the 12th was gone. Mrs. M——, my cousin A——, is indeed a divine musician and one of the most brilliantly-gifted women I have ever known. I am glad you met her, and sorry you did not meet oftener. I had a letter from Miss B—— the same day I received your last, the first for a long time. Useless to enjoin me to “write often” under such circumstances. I am not like the stars that scintillate in the vast silence and darkness; I must have response. The dear woman has, however, had more sufficient cause for the prolonged interval. Such trials of sickness, nursing, and death—one of those heart-crushing experiences that every life must know at some period or other. I am so glad I had written several days before her letter came. I can say nothing because there is no escape from her present life; the claims are those of blood, and duty, and love, and “though ‘the way leads over the burning marl,’ her feet must tread therein.” I pray, however, it may not last much longer. If she were stronger, I shouldfeel less solicitude. Doyouplease write to her as often as you can. Your words will do her great good; they will give her momentary forgetfulness of that wearing round of duty—some refreshing “surcease of care.” I wish she had been well enough to stay with me; but she was not. I was terrified at times thinking “if she should die.” You know she would not have come except on my account. When she seemed breaking down, the sense of responsibility was beyond words. My disappointment in the whole plan has been one of the most bitter in my life. Had all gone as we thought it would, ours would have been as I said, “an ideal trip.”

You did not say a word about Christmas. Have you erased it from your calendar? Seems to me you might have said to me at least, “A pleasant Christmas; a good New Year.” Why didn’t you? I had such a unique and beautiful time, I want to tell you something about it. Have I mentioned that I am in a German family? The mother, three daughters and a young son of sixteen constitute the little circle. We three are the only outsiders. My friend and myself were taken possession of to help decorate the Christmas tree that reached to the ceiling. This was Sunday after-dinner work.We helped with a will. At five it was “a thing of beauty,” of dazzling beauty, if it did owe its sheen and glitter to tinsel and icicles of glass. Then we were dismissed. At seven, we sat down to our usual supper. The frau-mutter was invisible and the doors of the saal (salon) closed and locked on the inside. We were not allowed to quit the table till 8:30 o’clock, when the locked doors were thrown wide open, the portiéres thrust aside, and we were invited to enter. We rushed! Every kind of light and color made such a blaze we could not see for a moment. Five tables of presents, mine being one, and full of such pretty things. Maybe I’ll show them to you when I come home. Among them “The Niebelungenlied,” in German! After admiring everything to the full, a pretty and tempting table appeared as if by magic, and we sat down to a delicious collation. We lingered over it till eleven, then we went to church to see a specially-fine and solemn service. Never did I witness anything so strange, spectral, and weird. It lasted an hour. At the conclusion, we made the circuit of the altars to see their decorations. One had the Christmas child (a beauty of a wax doll) in a cradle of roses. Men, women, and children were dropping ontheir knees to it. It seemed to do them a world of good. We came home to find another table awaiting us with beer and coffee in addition to the other good things. How long we sat over that I cannot say, but Christmas wishes were exchanged long before we broke up. I don’t mind acknowledging it looks as if we “made a night of it.” The ensuing week was too full to even touch on, so I skip to New Year’s Eve, when we had another characteristic time. There was a German New Year’s Eve banquet, dishes never served at any other time. One was a salad, a kind of Salmagundi compounded of every known edible and condiment—at least I can’t think of anything that was left out! After several courses of such came all kinds of—oh! goodies and goodies—cakes, nuts, candies, fruits—oh! everything, and a great, magnificent punch-bowl was borne in in a kind of state procession. But didn’t I hope it was eggnogg! It wasn’t, though; it was a “Burgundy punch.” Well, we ate, nibbled cakes, crunched candies, cracked nuts and jokes, and drank toasts standing, and clinking glasses till we rang out the Old and in the New Year. I wasn’t a success in the drinking, “‘pon honor,” but you ought to have seen how soon I caught thetrick of clinking. Our hostess taught us. You see that was poetry, rythm, the sweetest, softest music like Swiss bell ringing! The punch, I take it was an innocuous drink. Nobody’s head was lost if everybody’s tongue was found! These kindly German people, these pleasant, social customs, “this golden, fair enchanted life in the valley of Bohemia”—how I shall miss them when I go! Alas! I am beginning to flutter my wings. Paris or Vienna next en route to Italy. So sorry to leave, but I want to see them too. Now, if you were only in Italy, what a pair of tramps we would be!

I am waiting to hear what you think of “the counterfeit presentment.” It does not show the faded roses and the false teeth (I kept my mouth shut), but the frosted locks and the crow’s feet wouldn’t be left out. Remember to send it back if it does not suit.

No. 21 or 22. Pshaw! don’t let’s keep count—“The fair penitent.”

L. G. C.

Munich, January 15, 1883.

ITHINK I have written to you from this city before. Do you remember? Well, no need for alarm. I have no intention of treating you to a second dish of my raptures.

Yours of September 8th came to hand some days ago. My promptness in reply is meant to point no moral. If people prefer being laggards, I have no objection; onlyIam not of that ilk, and must be taken in kind. You know I can’t tell a lie. I tried my best to fix up an innocent one—the kind that cheats oneself into thinking it not a lie at all. The ingenious sophism would not work. Yet I have done it many a time. What is the matter with me? My heart is troubled. I am afraid of myself; afraid for myself; afraid I am getting too good for this world. I hope you are not praying over me as a dear little girl I knew over her baby brother, that all the world was praising. “Why do you pray so for Arthur to be one of the good little children, Sprite?” “Oh! because all the good little

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children die and go to heaven; and then he’ll beout of my way.”

Well, I just read your letter outright. That’s all there is about it.

So let all the world keep the cotton out of their ears. It has the secret; so have the cousins! I don’t believe you know what a readable letter you wrote. It wasn’t a bit of trouble to make the meaning plain; and for the mere reading, why every syllable just came tripping from the tongue. And long before I got to the announcement, the ladies exclaimed: “Oh! we know what he is going to tell—his age.” I don’t see why you want to keep it such a secret, anyhow. To be suresixtyisn’t a boy’s age, but then neither is it an antediluvian’s. Dear me! Only think if you had been “the prehistoric man,” or even Methuselah! Then you might have well prepared to whisper it into the soundless silence. Somehow you keep all their names to yourself. It makes it very awkward for me when I need to use them. See how inconsiderate you are. Do you think that sort of treatment “good breeding!” If you do, I’ll give you a new version.

I don’t feel sure about your last scintillation—that is, that it was ever started across thesea. You have not mentioned it before, and you had plenty of chances. Instead of crossing ours didn’t it scintillate “all of a suddint” after you heard of ours.

Be a “living monument” of moral courage that owns up—when cornered!Be.

I had a letter from Miss B—— last week. She is in Paris, and wished me to join her and go to Sweden and Norway. Had it been two months earlier it would have been the very thing to do; but it is now too late for the midnight sun. When I go I want to see that too. Do you know she is a writer spoken of as the delightful authoress of “A Trip to Scandinavia,” “The Midnight Sun,” and “Travels through Russia and the Orient”? I don’t believe you dreamed what she was when you saw her. You would have been lesspresumptuous! You have done it. Tremble and quake as you recall your audacity. What is left for you to do next time? I have had a letter from the other Miss B——, too, recently. Do you write often to her? It is worth any one’s while to wring her letters from her. Such weather as she wrote of! It made one think of the “Garden of Eden.”

As for coming home, I don’t see my way to that yet; perhaps in the Spring. I do not bindmyself to go or to stay; only I wish to go to Spain, Greece and the Orient first. Once back, then I doubt if I shall ever come again. Chimney corner days are at hand. We are meantime enjoying the world about us. This city is brimful of interest, you know.

Yesterday was a grand gala day. I must have written to you of the October Fest, a mixed exposition of the peasants and common classes, agricultural, cattle, horse-racing, games, and side-shows. It is held in some meadows at the foot of the great statue; lasts about two weeks. Open on Sunday, and the second Sunday is the one set apart for the attendance of the court. The late king, poor, mad, gifted, handsome Louis, omitted this. He kept up no customs that exacted his appearance in public. The regent announced his intention to resume. This meant a full attendance of all the royal family in all their gorgeousness. It attracted an immense crowd reckoned at 70,000. We were of it. The day was perfect, crystal clear, and just cool, just warm enough. All sorts of costumes, equipages, and human beings, the last a well-dressed, well-behaved, most amiable mass.

The regent came in an open carriage with six horses and jockeys in brilliant trappings,preceded and followed by a fine body-guard. His three sons and two nephews came in open carriages likewise, but with only four horses. Some ducal kinsmen in two-horse carriages; ambassadors and government officers in all their state. It was a most brilliant spectacle. I wish I had time to tell you all about it.

We had a day last week at the Augsburg six months’ Exposition just closing. The show was, of course, a “Centennial” on a small scale; the old city was ravishingly quaint, medieval and interesting.

But a four o’clock tea at the apartments of an officer in the army, who has married a young German friend of mine, was beyond words. “The linen closet!” If you had seen it, you would have bewailed your bachelor fate. The “tea” was a drink fit for the gods, with asoupçonof ——rumin it.

L. G. C.

Munich, October 4, 1886.

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Image not available for display: The Historic Windmill.The Historic Windmill.

WELL, here I am at last in Paradise! I was a long time on the way, but I would not have back one moment. To paraphrase dear, simple-hearted, child-like Hans Christian Anderson, “My journey has been a lovely dream, happy, and full of incident.”

I left Munich two weeks ago alone, for a twenty-four hours’ railway trip, in a mixture of foreign countries and a medley of foreign languages that would have swallowed me up in inextricable confusion, but for the wise precautions I had taken to fend it off. I made requisitions in every direction and on every available person on almost as extensive a scale as the Kaiser might if he were going in for a big war; the American consul and all my other acquaintances—their name was not “legion”—all being called upon. I had a royal escort to the station—three ladies and Mr. S—— placed me in the care of the “guard” (conductor), who spoke French and German. His fluency in both I’ll own was a trifle aggravating. My friends hadput me in my “carriage” (sleeper), which was elegant and commodious, such as only princes and princesses and the like are in the habit of using. I had it all to myself. How I wish that Tower of Babel incident had happened on some other planet. Then they all smothered me with kisses, and the dear, young fräuleins with tears. The warning shriek sent them tumbling over each other to get off the train. Handkerchiefs were waved from the platform, and oh! in a flash I was out in the universe of moonlight and solitude, cut off from all I know. But, having obeyed the instructions of my special advisers, the American consul and others, not to have a courier, I felt no anxiety. Said the A. C., “Tip the guard.” Ditto, said Mr. S——, “Tip the guard,” and “Tip the guard,” chimed in No. 3. And on my order to that effect, said Mr. S——, young America, Harvard graduate! “I’ve made it bully with the guard.” So that guard didn’t mean to bear the weight on his conscience without rendering a fair equivalent of service. In he came popping every few minutes to say something in that dreadfully fluent German. If he thought I was not understanding fast enough, resorting to French (and this is a most mortifying admission); when bothseemed failing, he tripped into the most ludicrously despairing pantomime! At bedtime he put a crimson shade over my lamp and bade me “good-night” with that exquisite French politeness that has not its match in the world, charging me to call him if I needed anything. But—the chilly little bed he had made for me—Ugh! It made me shiver just to look at it. Think of it, linen sheets and one spread after my German nest of down—a bed of it under and another over me.

Fortunately, I think the earth never saw a lovelier night, a full moon and that clear, keen air that tells “Jack Frost” is busy; and the pretty country slipping past so fast in the dazzling white light. I sat up, of course. Towards morning it grew “cold, very cold.” It was ruthless in me, but I stripped that bed of its one cover to wrap up in. When we ran into Strassburg at five and got out for breakfast, I just roasted myself by the great, generous fire. My waiter spoke English. I crossed his hand with that douceur, “a silver shilling,” in England, mark, in Germany. Believe me, the sweetest sounds ever syllabled by human tongue are those of one’s own vernacular. On the frontier, we changed from German to French cars, fromthe luxurious warmth of the former to the comfortless cold of the latter; the one heated by invisible registers, the other by a tube of hot water laid on the floor—merely a poor foot-warmer. I was never more tired of a journey, all because of the cold; therefore never so glad to see the end.

When I jumped out of the carriage at the Gare de L’Est, you need not be told how glad I was to find a relative awaiting me. He took me to the Grand Hotel, the largest and most fashionable in Paris, and after I was rested, out on the balcony attached to show me the Rue des Capucins by gas-light, lamp-light, moon-light, and star-light. I was overwhelmed with the sight, speechless at such a brilliant spectacle—millions, it seemed, of lights in every possible arrangement. This winter has been so rainy, I am glad I came no sooner. I shall be away by the middle of the month to Italy, and return again to Paris later.

The view from my private balcony (at a pension kept by a French lady, to which I have changed from the hotel) is charming, and the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile is not a stone’s throw distant. I also see the great palace of Mrs. Mackey from my balcony; it isnearer than the Arc. It has a little square all to itself. She is now at Nice, and it is closed. I heard that Mr. Mackey is worth two hundred millions! Grace Greenwood is in Paris. Her daughter is pronounced by everyone to be “exquisitely beautiful.”

I have seen the Hotel des Invalides, Champs de Mars, Trocadero, Passy, the loveliest suburb of homes; the Bois de Boulogne, that you know by heart, but oh! what an enchantment to know by sight; the Champs Elysées; the Place de la Concorde; the garden of the Luxembourg; the Palace de l’Étoile with the grand Arc de Triomphe, the largest, they say, in the world; the Madeleine; Chapelle Expiatoire; and the afternoon at the Gobelins, looking at those wonders of wool, silk, gold and silver, wrought in such patience “by the most practiced eye” by men’s fingers never allowed to demean themselves by other work of whatever kind; and the Champs Elysées on Sunday afternoon! This last is the great moving human spectacle. I have seen nothing like it but Hyde Park on that gala-day of “The meet of the four-in-hands.” Such countless lines of carriages in the street! Looking ahead I could not see how we were ever going to get through the approaching host,apparently as compact and impregnable as one’s idea of the advancing columns of an army. I tell you it filled me with awe. In the street I could not detect space enough for even one more carriage. One must see to comprehend how grand and imposing such a vast concourse of seething humanity is.

The weather is like our last of April. The grass is thick and green, and from three to five inches high. The flower-beds in the squares are full of flowers. As one walks or drives, whiffs of sweet violets are constantly blown to you. At least one great flower-shop greets the delighted eye every half-square. The sunshine is a dazzle most of the time. I must stop, but will write more at an early date.

L. G. C.

Paris, February 4, 1883.

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OH, DEAR! I don’t know where to begin. It seems an age since I wrote; “in point of fact” it has been only—oh! I shan’t go into calculations and dates. Figures are such unmanageable little demons I cut them long ago. There is no such thing as getting round them. They are so fair and square and exact and relentless, I throw up my hands and give up without struggle when it comes to a contest with them. Let me see; I must make a beginning somewhere. Where did I leave off, I wonder? Does it matter? How can it, seeing I am not “a newspaper correspondent,” or writing for fame or “filthy lucre,” or for anything in the “wide, wide world” that can be attributed to a higher impulse than natural depravity? For between ourselves, to be really honest, I do believe I am writing simply and solely to—nag you! Why? Oh, just because “a woman’s reason.” It is not only argument, but it overcomes all logic, which, from your superior sphere of immensity, being a bachelor, you have not found out. Just look outwhen you get your supplemental hemisphere, and think of these words! They are a lot of nonsense to you now; they will be the quintessence of wisdom to you then. But I am not going to let you any further into the secrets of that blissful “two in one existence.” Go and find out for yourself, “old boy.” In Paradise! Write a poem on those words; they seem meant for me. Well, I have been in this, “the Paradise of all good Americans,” for two weeks plus. Somehow I think I can find a better one for my soul, but it is a tiptop place for one still in the body.

I came from Parisall aloneone lovely moonlight night and sunshiny day. The trip had a smack of royalty in it. I chartered a wagon lit (a “sleeping-car,” aswesay), and bribed the garde (conductor), and otherwise bestowed myself “as only princes and princesses do in this country,” said the pleasant German people with whom I had been domiciled so long. “Oh!” said I, “Iam a princess; we are all princesses in America,or can be”—the last little clausesotto voce. My “wagon” was all crimson, velvet and mahogany, and looked so glowy when my cavalier shrouded the lamp, a generous one in size and esthetic in its finish of antiquebronze, in a crimson shade, I thought it was heated to midsummer warmth; but didn’t I find out to the contrary before morning! And the thin, chilly little French couch after my German nest of down—will I ever forget it? Every time I glanced at it, it just resolved the whole me—body, mind and spirit—into one big shiver. Thanks to the glorious full moon, that could not put out Orion though, there was ample entertainment outside, so I sat up all night. It did not seem long till that freezing period just before dawn set in; then all my wraps, and the little bed’sone coveradded to them, couldn’t make me warm.

You can guess I was glad when we ran into Strassburg at five, and I was conducted to a great, bright, comforting fire and a delicious hot breakfast. My special waiter talked English, too, and I didn’t give him a rest for the hour we tarried there. My blessed native tongue! Take my word for it, till you prove for yourself, the sweetest sounds human ear can catch are those of one’s own vernacular. The German cars were heated by invisible registers and were the perfection of comfort, but at Avricourt, the frontier, we changed into French, and their heating apparatus was a flat zinc tube laid on the floor,“a mere foot warmer.” “I kept chilling,” as they say in ague countries, all the rest of the day, notwithstanding an Italian gentleman who spoke four languages, English being one, and two French gentlemen who spoke French only, devoted themselves to securing my comfort. The delicacy of the adjustment of their attentions I shall never forget—to the extreme of courtesy, but never verging on obtrusiveness. Well, the long, wearing day came to an end, and Paris and my uncle met me. But—this is why I told you all the above—such a dreadful cold as the trip and change from German comfort to French chilliness and cheerlessness gave me! I have been fighting it ever since. It is accompanied with an excess of deafness. And now you can account for all my viciousness.

I have had “a pretty good time” though, notwithstanding. Have been to a beautiful dinner party, where I met eighteen very agreeable Americans and two or three French people. Have made other pleasant acquaintances, and “got in” a reasonable amount of “sight-seeing.” The weather till yesterday and to-day has been all sunshine and April-like in temperature. The grass is from three to four inches high, thick and green in the squares, gardensand Bois de Boulogne, and the flower-beds are full of flowers. I have bundled up equal to an Esquimau and had several “outings,” leaving my cold to its own devices. And I have—“honor bright”—fallen in love. Perfectly ridiculous and absurd in one of my age! but I could not keep it. He issohandsome, so elegant, so genial, so witty, so entertaining—so everything! I wasn’t thinking of such a catastrophe, and I did not know what was the matter till the mischief was done. Don’t pity my infatuation. I glory in it. He is “worth millions,” and 81+. You ought to see us enjoy each other. I’ll tell you more about him some time.

Paris does not overwhelm me as London did, because, I suppose, I did not see itfirst; nor does it charm me as Munich did, perhaps because I have so much Dutch blood in my veins against not one drop of French. The parts I have seen do not give it a distinctive character; it is rather cosmopolitan, like our great cities, than foreign. I had a lovely half-day—nothing seems to be done here till after the 12 o’clock breakfast—at Napoleon’s monument, the grandest I have seen; the Hotel des Invalides, with its church and armory and picturesquely dilapidated ruins of human beings; the Trocadero; Passy, a charmingsuburb of homes; and so through a part of the Bois de Boulogne and the Champs Elysées home. Another, I spent at the manufactory of theGobelins, those tapestries as immortal as the frescoes of Angelo and Raphael. Some of them are worked from express designs by the latter. Think of six square inches a day being a full-grown man’s daily task! Such a respectable-looking body of men as they are, too! They are raised for that special work, and their hands are not permitted to degrade themselves by contact with any other. Yet another at a Pompeian palace—meant to be an exact reproduction of the villas of that buried city. It is a gem of unique and exquisite beauty, and I broke one of the commandments; for I could not help coveting my neighbor’s possessions. It is full of Story’s (ourStory) statuary.

One statue, Saul, is in tinted marble, a grand, majestic old man, and certainly in some respects a triumph of the chisel’s art, but I am not quite sure I indorse the tinting. No satisfaction can be complete. There was a number of imposing female statues; their names are at the base inGreek characters, which I know. What I did not know, nor any of the party, was the English of those names! I ground myteeth and “vowed a vow”—when I die and am resurrected, I mean to be mistress of every language under the sunorabolish all but one. There shall never be another Tower of Babel experiment on the same planet with myself—never! One of the paintings on the wall of the picture gallery was a haunting one—a turbulent ocean, a cloudy sky; not high in the heavens a thinner mass of cloud through which the moon shone with sufficient strength to cast a wake of spectral light athwart those heaving surges. “Solitude” was the name. I could not keep my eyes from it. I have seen just such a night, and felt in all its force the dreary, weird solitude of it. Do I make you see it? Shut your eyes and try. I go from here to Italy in a few days.

L. G. C.

Paris, February 8, 1883.

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HERE again, after six months’ absence—six months only! How to believe that! Why, I seem to have lived cycles and cycles; seem to be not one, just one small, insignificant I, but dozens and dozens of myself. Yes, even sometimes have an enormous delusion that the little nobody who went away suffered a not-sea, but an no, not-earth—What then? Ah! I have it: tourist change into something strange, grand, glorious (it must out), goddess-like! Was ever presumption so immense and so absurd? Well,Iam not responsible for it, but theexperiences. Could any mortal go through such and escape the same scath?

September 2d. If good intentions were the same sort of masters that czars, emperors, the great mogul, the sublime porte,et id omne genusare, or have been—what a lot of things come under that last pathetic head—this letter would have been finished and on the way to you. But there is such a throng of hindering duties got themselves mixed up in my affairs, I really don’t knowwhat moment I may be ruthlessly torn from the performance of what I wish to do to that I wish—still more to do! Such is woman’s—

September 3d. Just there I was torn off again after I don’t know how many feminine raps at my door and feminine heads bobbing in, and, worst of all, each of them supplied with that rabidest of all tongues, a feminine one! (Let alone a woman for a just estimate of her own sex!) Don’t that last dozen lines show “confusion worse confounded” from some cause? You have no leave to indulge in mental comment, such as, “Perhaps, my lady, that unspiritual circumstance was in your own state of mind, without any outside pressure to develop it.” And so don’t you dare. Truth is, I was in the superlative degree of calmness, collectedness, clearness, comprehensiveness, like clouds that have gathered their quota of electricity, the inevitable “next thing” being “the most brilliant display of fireworks of the season.” Any letter heretofore would have been a battery of “spent balls,” an eruption of mere dead cinders. There! that’s what you would have gotten, what you have missed, because of those hindering goddesses. “The more’s the pity.”

I glance up at that last broken sentence,“Such is woman’s—.” What was to follow, I am as much at a loss to recall as a panic-stage, I mean—struck, debutante of the boards. Oh! for “a prompter.” Can’t you come to the rescue? I will “most graciously permit.” And do you know, even now when I have double-locked (both doors andears) myself in for this blessed privilege of communion with a “choice fellow-being,” these pages are bound to be tossed off with the lightning-like rapidity of a printing-press of the latest patent, not only with all modern improvements, but those of the future too! For somebody is coming directly todejeunerwith me, another specimen of feminine attributes, that of being equal to inviting herself, being not the least. She will claim me for the rest of the day. And that’s the way it will be.

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