TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
Dresden, June 13, 1869.
I’ll tell you what our plans are at present. To stay here till Friday noon, the 18th; Mrs. G. to be very quiet, as she cares mainly to see the gallery and enjoy it leisurely. On Tuesday, I, with the young ladies, go up to Freiberg to visit the celebrated mining school, etc., and on return next day, to see the Forst-Akademie at Tharand. Friday night all to Töplitz, to pass two days with a friend,—the Sunday’s rest. Monday to Prague, Tuesday to Regensburg, Wednesday or Thursday to Munich, and Saturday evening to be at Ragatz (or Pfeffers). Soon after at least Mrs. G. and I will be settled for a while at Geneva.
Hôtel Byron, Villeneuve, July 15, 1869.
... Boissier has been seriously sick with a pleurisy, etc.; is at Orbe, or was. If still there I should go to see him; but he has now gone to Gries, in Appenzell, to a bathing-place, and I shall not see him.... Reuter, his curator, was away last week, but I shall see him, I presume, to-morrow.
I have just lost my mother, at a good old age. My father died twenty-four years earlier....
It is a charming place here. We are spending the morning lazily, and go on soon to Geneva. The young people have gone on to Chamouni, which we do not care to revisit.... Kindest regards to Professor Fenzl, with regrets that I shall not see him.
TO JOSEPH HOWLAND.
Interlaken, July 26, 1869.
... We have had a joyful time in Switzerland, and for me a complete rejuvenation. And as to Mrs. Gray, who did not need that, what we call “the movement cure” has done her more good than all Egypt. That my lamentable failure of breath on Piz Langarde was owing, not to advancing years, as I had foreboded, nor wholly to the rarefaction of the atmosphere above 9,000 feet, as Mrs. H. suggested, but to a violent cold, then impending, I proved satisfactorily by walking the other day down from Mürren to Lauterbrunnen (having walked up the eve before), and then right on over the Wengern Alp to Grindelwald, and I believe as comfortably as I did it (all but the first part) thirty, and then nineteen, years ago!