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 out when 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 Paris all alone one lovely moonlight night and sunshiny day. The trip had a smack of royalty in it. I chartered a wagon lit (a “sleeping-car,” as we say), 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, “I am a princess; we are all princesses in America, or can be”—the last little clause sotto 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 antique bronze, 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’s one cover added 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, gardens and 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 is so handsome, 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 it first; 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 charming suburb of homes; and so through a part of the Bois de Boulogne and the Champs ElysÉes home. Another, I spent at the manufactory of the Gobelins, 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 (our Story) 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 in Greek characters, which I know. What I did not know, nor any of the party, was the English of those names! I ground my teeth and “vowed a vow”—when I die and am resurrected, I mean to be mistress of every language under the sun or abolish 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.