THIS moment finished the second reading of yours of 22d. Ah! there are some things you don’t have any conception of; for instance, you don’t know how good it is to get a letter from home in a foreign land. I do. Oh! Oh! Oh!

I came in from the opera, Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” in German, in a “rapt ecstasy,” and, in the act of seating myself at our “after the play little supper,” I saw your letter lying on my plate. I am intuitive; I knew it was from you. I picked it up and laid it down with the address on the under side. What would “Goggles” say to that? No; he is not a woman; he is not Miss S——. The French have a proverb that runneth in this wise: “La patience c’est la genie.” If it had been wisdom those keen little epigrammatists would not have missed it so. However, I do not wish to discourage you in the exercise of that passive virtue; rather let it “work its good and perfect work.” Miss S——, not “Goggles,” then said: “Why are you not going to read your letter; will it keep?” Of course I blushed and hung down my head and simpered, and—but you’ve seen the process many a time. Now, what would you give to know how soon I got through with that dainty meal, and hurried away to be “all alone to myself,” to pore over the letter that confessed to two “love letters” to another woman. It does not need you or anybody else to convince me I am the superarchangelic creature I was reported to you. I know it myself now! See how good I am to write at this late hour, not finding it possible to put you off to that will-o’-the-wisp time, “a more convenient season.” And so glad of the love letters; not jealous a bit, because they went where I want them to go! “Don’t worry in well doing,” “effuse,” “flow like the lava,” “let all the currents of your being set that way,” and so come into possession of that great estate which all the kingdoms of the earth cannot match—“a noble woman nobly planned.” Oh, please, I did not write those letters for any one but my sister-in-law. She cut them up, and pieced them together again to suit them to “print,” After they were published she wrote what she had done, begging my forgiveness, but making such an appeal in behalf of the paper I not only could not condemn, I even had to tell her she might do as she pleased with my letters to her, only my name must not be known in connection with them. You fairly frighten me when you speak of them in the same breath with your friends Mr. W—— and “E. A.” Indeed, I feel timid about writing to you, since you have such letters as theirs. Only, we write to each other for the simple “fun of the thing,” not giving much heed to anything else, don’t we? And, on the whole, I hail from “Old Kaintuck,” and that doesn’t mean cowardice in any direction exactly!

I wish you could have been with me in Nuremberg—my heart city. You’d have seen things too—all that I did not see; and between us there would not have been much left behind. I am going back there some day—ah! that misty future—it may be as the children are credited with saying, though I never heard them, “before soon,” and it may be when I die and am resurrected there. This Bavarian soil has a curiously homey tread. I can easily see how I might linger here, “maybe for years, maybe forever.” So much to do; so many places to go to; so much to see; such food for thought, imagination, for dolce far niente. You know the kind of pabulum that witching state of existence claims, but who can describe it? I am tempted to give you “a sample day” out of this wonder life in Munich. Do I count egotistically when I admit I count on your caring for it, because I count on the interest of friendship? Did I tell you to expect and excuse repetitions? Think how many letters I write, and every one wishes to hear everything, and I try not to disappoint.

We are fortunate in pensions. I am on Maximilian Platz, and my windows look out on, first, the Schiller Monument Platz, an exquisite memorial platz, all to itself; a semi-circle, with a thick half belt of trees for the background; in front an oval plat of grass, bordered with a bed of flowers, in the center of which stands the statue in bronze on a white marble pedestal. Just in front of it, grown in the grass, is an evergreen wreath; beyond it rise, above a thicket of trees in their rich Autumn tints, the towers of the Wittelsbach Palace, the residence of Ludwig (grandfather of the present king) after his abdication, Brienner strasse on one side and Maximilian Platz (a great semicircular street) on the other. By the way, they converge, the latter here running into the other, and thus making an end of itself, from a spacious boulevard and driveway, around which are blocks of fine edifices in a cream-colored stone. Immediately beneath my windows is a small triangular platz, a bijou of a beer garden, in trees and vines, a gorgeous mosaic of greens, golds, browns and scarlets, and bowers and tables, and chairs and shaded lamps, the kind that make moonlight.

Well, I begin the day with my breakfast in my own apartment, all alone. That’s the custom of the country, you know, not my indolence. With that spectacle to interest and claim my eager eyes, I shall give you day before yesterday. At 10 a. m. Miss S—— and I went to the palace, which means an entire square composed of three immense palaces—the Konigsbau, the Alte Residenz, or Old Palace, and the Festsaalbau—each occupying one side of the square; the fourth being filled up with the Court Chapel and Court Theater. The greater part of all these is accessible, which makes so much to be seen it has to be taken in “broken doses,” so zu sagen. The Schatzkammer (Treasury) was our objective point. We ran the gauntlet of soldiers on guard, a spacious court with a handsome fountain, a kind of cloistered stretch with a wonderful grotto of shells, a maze of small ante-rooms, till finally, in a state of perfect bewilderment, we were taken in hand by the major-domo, who procured our tickets (a little ceremony requiring your cards and a silver mark), and ushered us into—oh! Monte Christo, the Arabian Nights, that stately pleasure dome that Kublai-Khan decreed in Zanadu! We wandered through them all. First, through a long gallery called the Stammbaum (Genealogical Tree), containing the portraits of the princes and princesses of the house of Wittelsbach. The room itself is most attractive in gold, gilt and white ornamentation, what space is left from the pictures—a collection that any family might be proud of. At the end, “Open Sesame,” and a great door flies back, and we enter. I wish I had Ovid’s pen, with which he wrote the description of the Palace of the Sun! Such a blaze of diamonds and rubies, and pearls and emeralds, and all the gems of the earth! There was the Hausdiamant, a monster brilliant “in the Order of the Golden Fleece;” and the Palatinate pearl, half black, half white; strings of buttons by the yard of diamonds, a central one as large as a silver quarter, encircled by smaller ones; breast-plates, as it were, of pear-shaped pearls dangling from a mesh of diamonds; crowns of diamonds that had a blinding brilliancy; cabinets filled with vessels made from rich stones and inlaid with the most precious stones; a copy of Trajan’s Pillar it took the goldsmith twenty years to execute; and more of such royal belongings than I could get into a day’s description.

And one thing not put down in the catalogue: As I was standing transfixed by some ornaments in pink rubies and diamonds, over my shoulder sounded the tones of a woman’s voice in American English. You ought to have heard the suppressed fervor of my exclamation under my breath: “Oh, you blessed American tongue!” I turned to confront a most agreeable countrywoman, just as eager as myself for recognition on that ground alone. I met her again at the opera to-night, and we had another chat. I think her husband is an artist, as they live in Florence, and he told me he had been over here sixteen or seventeen years, and was “longing to get back home.” On leaving the palace, Miss S—— came home; but I wasn’t half ready for indoors—never am except at meal-times and bed-time! So I wandered around the streets in the sunshine, looking in the shop windows and picking up a picture here and there—among

them that of the “Vier Konige,” as the old Kaiser calls it, himself holding his baby great-grandson with as proud an air as if it was his own first-born son, with his son and grandson on either side. Four living generations in the same picture is indeed a spectacle to be made a note of.

Another picture was that including the empress, crown princess, and the young mother herself holding her little king. It is a picture beaming with both pride and happiness. That must have been one of life’s happy moments—one of the few supreme flashes of earthly felicity. And on compulsion—dinner, always in Germany a mid-day meal. I am a true Bohemian now; but I was a housekeeper once, and I don’t like to derange the order of a household, so I am always “on time.” After dinner, out again by myself, Miss S—— having a German lesson. First, a call at a book-store for a variety of Munich gossip. The proprietor is a handsome young man—cultivated, traveled, of good family—his father being a captain in the army, and a very genial, well-mannered person. I drop in on him quite often. He has been all over the United States, even to Cincinnati. I did not ask him about W——! As I sauntered out—I do everything just as the whim takes me—I thought I’d have a droschke drive, so I hailed one and stepped in. Oh! the earth, air and sky of these Munich days! A whole week of them, too, of that kind that makes one exclaim, “Mere existence is a luxury.”

After awhile I dismissed it at the door of the Kaulbach Gallery. It is not a large one, only a large room, as full as it can hold of the sketches and a few pictures of that popular Munich artist. It is on a retired street; a very pretty, tasteful building in a garden. A few, from one to three or four persons at a time, were coming and going the hour and a half I loitered. I am not going to bore you or any one with a catalogue or description of pictures, but one was so beautiful and touching I want you to look at it a moment through the lens of my—pen. A city still in the shadow of the night; gleams of dawn in the east; just floating up into the clear, higher air an angel clasping a little child in its arms, with only the words “Zu Gott;” such a common idea, so simply wrought out, but I could not get away from it.

The sketches were intensely interesting. Some were outlines with pencil or pen; others quite fully worked out, of nearly all his great masterpieces.

The cunning of his good right hand seemed never to have been at a loss. His portrait, painted by himself, stood on an easel, with three fadeless chaplets placed upon it by that loving homage which honors alike those who give and those who receive.

Out again and on again, turning my feet obstinately from the “home stretch.” Several squares took me to the “English Garden,” founded by Count Rumford, our uneuphonious “Mr. Thompson.” Acres of greenery in drives, walks, bowers, lakes, streams, etc., right on the edge of the city. Like Kane and the Polar Sea, I stood on the brink but didn’t jump in. I did not quite like strolling in its shady depths by myself. I had driven through, and the knowledge which neutralizes temptation might have had as much influence to the abstinence as the discretion. No bringing myself to the self-application of the word cowardice! Besides, there was counter-attraction somewhere within several squares which I had not seen, Ludwigkirche, with its altar painting, “The Last Judgment,” the largest oil painting in the world, sixty-three feet high and thirty-nine feet broad. Did you know that? I didn’t till the guide-book told me. You are welcome to my hard-earned information. I wish I had time to say something I want to just “in this connection.” Hm! I haven’t; I must hurry on. Of course, the painting is a masterpiece of art. Isn’t that the conventional expression that slips so “trippingly” from the half-fledged tourist? Among the spirits of the blessed is that of King Ludwig, crowned with laurels, attained presumably after his separation from Lola; also that of Dante, the poet of heaven and hell, in a red garment; and of Fra Angelico, the painter of Paradise, in the Dominican robe. I did not give a close inspection to the spirits of the other order. Vesper service was in progress, and I sat and watched the devout at their aves and paternosters, a scene in its way food for rather painful meditation. Such mechanical worship; such slavish superstition! Descending the entrance steps as I left the church, I was struck by their worn appearance. The daily tread of the multitudes of worshipers has left them almost unsafe. Then I lagged along Ludwig Strasse, the fine street entirely originated by that same King Ludwig who had public spirit and energy enough to hide a multitude of faults.

The sun was leaving me so fast I had to turn homeward, which I did as reluctantly as you turn back from some of your long tramps, I suspect. Isn’t a Munich day a rather fascinating span of life? I match the above day by day. Do you know what a large city it is—230,000 population? And how grand and clean and comfortable? I am wishing I could transport it to the United States for myself and my elect ones to dwell in! For oh! such bread and butter and coffee as abound! There! the weakness for creature comfort will not be thrust aside!

Don’t you want to know what neighbors I have? A banker at the end of this etage, a widower with a cherub of a child, and in the next suite of apartments to mine—a baron! Such a splendid-looking man! If he had only come sooner—you know the adage about propinquity—before I had quite lost my heart! I couldn’t help it. I was taken “so unawares”—not in the least dreaming what would be the issue—when I could not wrest my gaze from that superb creature in such brilliant array. Don’t tell on me! A Prussian officer! His uniform is the acme of taste, gorgeousness and becomingness; his off-duty saunter on the street the ultimatum of grace; his easy, dignified, unconscious bearing the perfection of deportment. He never stares at one. It was the merest accident that our eyes met, and the damage was done. Our glances got tangled in each other, and the more we struggled the more hopeless the knot. His name? You promise not to betray this weakness—but could I be a true American woman and come abroad and not lose my heart? His name is Legion; for I can’t tell them apart any more than I can help adoring them all—the graceful, gracious, gorgeous beings of gold and plumes and cockades and pompons, and altogether such uniforms! For what else were they made, indeed? See how I take you into my confidence? And now then, father confessor, having made a clean breast of it, I shall betake myself to my couch, in the words of “Goggles,” to “sleep the sleep of youth, innocence and beauty.” Did you say you were going to write fortnightly or weekly? The first will be best.

L. G. C.

MÜnchen, October 23, 1882.