I THINK 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; only I am 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

children die and go to heaven; and then he’ll be out 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 sure sixty isn’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 the sea. 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 less presumptuous! 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 bind myself 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 a soupÇon of —— rum in it.

L. G. C.

Munich, October 4, 1886.