YOURS of 15th received yesterday. May 17th was the date of receipt of your last previous favor. May 23d I mailed a reply from Florence. Yet you say you have had no letter for three months. What does this mean? I am “wrought up,” I can tell you; because that letter was the quintessence of myself. No use to go into details about it. You, who so adequately wreak me upon expression, “witty, wise, brilliant, great head and good heart”—dear me! were I the most egotistical instead of meek and lowly minded of women—impossible to compete with you in doing justice to myself—you would resent such “poaching in your preserves.” So I leave you to gnash teeth over the loss you can so fully comprehend. I shall never get over it myself, never. I think I must mention two items. There was a poem by myself and another by my cousin, Mrs. O——. I sent the latter to prove that I do not “monopolize the family genius.” You will remember you put that query. Please make a note of my magnanimity in not withholding an evidence of its being possessed in even a higher degree by another member. Do you think many—not women, but—fellow-beings would be equal to that? Oh! I groan to think of that lost scintilation! And shall every time I think of it. How you would have enjoyed it! And more—how you would have flashed back again! Being the cause of wit in others is almost better than being witty myself. No; come to think of it, I have to “own up” to preferring to being the possessor at first hand, and even in the overtopping degree. There’s the milk and meekness of human coveteousness, of which I am “a bright and shining light.” Not much of the goddess in such a confession. But—“I can’t tell a lie,” you know, any more than you or the rest of my brethren and sisters. Oh! oh!—oh—h—h! that letter!
I am so glad you had “a good time” with Miss B——. How near she is to my heart you must know by this time.
I have had a letter since you saw her. She wrote after her return home in a glow of fine spirits. What a “triumphal progress” she and Mrs. K—— had! Everybody, everywhere, seeming to have vied in the kindliest courtesies, hospitalities and affectionate attentions. It did me as much good to hear of it as if I had myself been a recipient. Mrs. K—— deserved the hospitalities in a special degree, her pleasant home in Covington having always been a real Kentucky “open house.” As for Miss B——, her extraordinary powers of entertaining—that big head of hers so stuffed full of everything that adds to the feast and festival and highest enjoyment—she honors her welcomes. Some day I count on seeing the work you are giving so much time to. The “aim” must be indeed “a difficult thing to attain,” as you say. But why not write unconscious of “the aim?” Would not the aim be attained, and more happily? I ask, not to give, but to gain, information.
You hope companions are kind. These are favorite cousins. What a lovely spot this is! We are making a little sojourn of a week “in the beautiful valley.” The Staubach is shimmering its long, filmy length in the sunlight to my right: the Jungfrau lifting just opposite its sun-struck dazzle of snow, and beautiful as she is reported, which cannot be said of all Jungfraus. The village is prettily scattered along the glacier stream “tearing like mad” through the depths of the valley; mountains hem it in, some snow-covered the year round; others, bare rock; lower ones are covered with trees and grass. Many show only precipitous walls, down which tumble and foam countless cascades. One long, wide reach of the mountain side is a vast meadow, here and there broken into knolls outlined by rows of trees, but the meadow part is mantled with the velvetiest green eyes ever fastened upon, and it is all dotted with little huts and barns, the lower half white and the upper, the richest reddish brown, under its roof of the same hue projecting into the deep eaves, we know so well from our ornamental “Swiss chÂlets.” Nothing could be lovelier or more unique and picturesque. I have seen nothing equal to it, anywhere else. Words cannot picture it, and I do not believe any artist could paint it.
L. G. C.
Lauterbrunnen, July 29, 1886.
