YOURS of May 17th “just to hand.” Date of your previous one, April 23d—I mean its receipt. This is what I call a most unreasonable space to let slip between. So you see, if the letters come oftener, I complain (being conscience-stricken, thinking I am imposing on your good-nature), and if they lag a little, I complain of that. If you can, match me with a more telling illustration of the impossibility of satisfying a woman! I am writing with some qualms, I can tell you. You did not ask me to write till I got to Switzerland. A mighty neat way of putting the spaces in for me as well as yourself! Did you ever make a note of that distich of John Hay’s—

I could not get it in right, but that will not hinder you from taking in that I am like to go

contrariwise. Besides, I know what you will miss if I do not write—enough to make you go into mourning, a bit of crape at your buttonhole. You don’t know what a Florence letter I wrote to you! Now, I am not given to self-praise; but I know the difference between still and sparkling catawba, glass and diamonds—stupidity and sparkle.

So I speak, “having authority”—that Florence letter, written to you long before I was up or the sun either; yes, just as Guercino’s maidens, fashioned of dusk and dawn, were beginning to put the stars out—that was a letter! Had it only have reached you, it would have thrown you into a fit of St. Vitus’ dance, or something equally demonstrative. I am a light sleeper, late to bed, later to sleep and early awake. I cannot get up ahead of all households, so I do not even hold in the fitful fancies, but let them have it all their own way. Such fascination as the habit is! I just snap my fingers at the frowning brows of Messrs. Abercrombie, Upham, Sir William Hamilton and all that cloud of accordant authorities on mental discipline. And for that letter, as for me, I did not have any more to do with its flash and fun and sauce and sparkle than one who sits on the sea-shore and watches the waves in a frolic, or as Longfellow says it for me:

Ah! if you had only got that letter! Alas! and alas! it was never even put on paper. You do not know how sorry I am, though, that you can never, never see it, and read it, and pirouette over it, and maybe frame it and hang it up on your walls, to be a memorial of me forever and forever. Indeed, I did so want you to have a Florence letter, for you know somebody, Rogers maybe, says:

It was so while I was there! The forenoons with Raphael, Angelo, Fra Angelica, Carlo Dolce, Guercino and a few others; the afternoons in long drives among the haunts of Galileo, Mrs. Browning, Landor, and such spirits. Will you ever know the delight of it, the beatitude? I hope so. Don’t put off the coming till you are too old. But now I am in Venice! In Venice in June! And yesterday and to-day have been each the very one described as I have read somewhere: “The day was one of those which can come to the world only in early June at Venice. The heaven was without a cloud, but a blue haze made mystery of the horizon where the lagoon and sky meet. The breath of the sea bathed in freshness the city, at whose feet her tides sparkled and slept.” And to-morrow will be the same; and day after day I feel in all the spirit of a prophetess. Indeed, the weather might have been blown from Paradise. Drifting about in a gondola! The largest, most ecstatic breath you ever drew must come in right here. Even that will not express the exquisite, intangible bliss of such existence. It eludes words as quicksilver eludes the grasp. I am having long mornings, enchanting afternoons, whole days of it. Do you wonder if I feel as if under some magician’s spell? Come, take a drift with me, and find out for yourself. First, the length of the Grand Canal. Your gondolier is behind; you do not see him. There is nothing to save you from your enchanted fate. The blue sky above; the crystal waves beneath; the beautiful, stately old palaces on either side, time-stained, unlike anything you ever saw, a fascination to sight and dreams, that will haunt you the rest of your life; the other gondolas sliding by; now and then a pleasure-boat, with its crowded deck and gay awning, and though moving by steam as noiseless as ours—no smoke; presently another bridge shows its span ahead, and then you slip under it and on; next you are idly noting a pleasant looking party of ladies and cavaliers coming from the cool archway of a palace to their waiting gondola, and you are a little startled by hearing behind the gondolier’s voice, “That is where Lord Beeron lived.” You remember you had meant to ask him to point out that particular one. You rouse, lean forward, give a curious gaze, then drop back into your drift and dreams, powerless to keep from it! Ah!—that is the Rialto. You rouse again, and give another intense look, and then it is left behind. You shoot another bridge and—you give it up. This can not be earth. You know it is not heaven. Where are you? Surely you are at last on the direct way to it. Heaven—the Heaven of not your reading the Sunday-school and catechisms taught, but of your dearest dreams and purest moods—that is awaiting you there in

that dazzling glory of silver radiance where the sky and water meet. You lean forward involuntarily, your very soul in your eyes, striving to pierce that shining veil right to the Great Mystery. You do not feel baffled. You might have done it, only the gondola has curved into a side canal and your vision is shut from sight. Best so. One could not bear such ecstasy longer and live, I think. But you are like one in a trance for the rest of the way. Before you sleep, you open your little day-book to make a record of the day. Here is what will greet you when you turn its pages in the future—“Perfect, Perfect Venice.” That is all. Will you smile over it then? I wonder. Dear me! I hope not, for the experience has come after my head is gray. Earlier you know—

No! no! a thousand times, no! You will droop over it and dream it all over again, and thrill and throb with the remembered rapture as even now—

You are good to tell me so much of your life. I am glad you had the gracious hours at C—— with your friend. Will his verdict have anything to do with the fate of the “Essays?” But you must never think of me as a judge and critic. I appreciate, enjoy and have a wonderful fund of enthusiasm, once it is set going. As for anything that does not “commend itself to my taste,” I simply turn away from it. Why use the scalpel or scathing tongue? I should be marvelously well-pleased, though, to have a reading of the Essays.

I had a letter, so long in the coming, from Miss B—— some days since; so was already in possession of the “pitiful story.” No, not that. I think whatever comes to us is our true work, hard as it may seem at the time. Did you ever see or hear of an argument of William Corry’s in his prime that had a speech of Caesar’s in it? One line of it left its brand in my memory. John (my husband) brought it to me to read when he was George Pugh’s partner, and we were living in Cincinnati. “If I am to die to-morrow, then that is what I have to do to-morrow.” John declaimed it for me as he had just heard Mr. Corry. It was never to be forgotten. I hope you have written to her ere this is in your hands, and may your words be indeed helpful, inspiring. How often we all need such. She is a splendid creature, so gifted for a household deity! “Caterer, cook and nurse,” who so shines at the festal board, in the fireside circle, wherever knowledge, wit and wisdom shed their light and graces! All that is wanting is the proper sphere. And yet there be those so blind they will not see! Who is of them?

What have you found in me that gave you leave to think I cared specially for “Kentucky gossip,” or indeed for any gossip? Please, if you have such an impression, seek for a revised edition of me. “Assuredly” (Mahomet’s cuss-word), your letters hitherto have not run to gossip and I have not complained. “A continuation of the same to the same,” may chance to be all sufficient.

Yes, do not hunt up strange fiddle-strings on my account. You know I have reached the years where old strains are best. “All the same,” write whatever goads you to bestow it upon me. Oh! I glanced from my window—if you could just see that overarching sky, that is heaven; if you could drink in a draught of this air, that is very elixir of life, if—if you could see what I see, feel what I feel Oh! oh! oh! Perfect, perfect Venice!

L. G. C.

Venice, June 8, 1883.