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 penance beautifully. 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 the poppies—to be steeped in blissful forgetfulness by it! but not shackles of adamant; not

or,

or,

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

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 creation eats. I have 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 a vade 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 you had gone 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 should feel less solicitude. Do you please 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 on their 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 the trick 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.