My charming Munich is showing its kinship to the Alps. The snow is falling fine, thick and fast. I am not quite delighted, because I do not like the “beautiful snow.” I meant to have had one whole year of summer time, getting to Italy before cold weather. But Miss B——’s sickness changed my arrangements. The party I joined were to winter here for study. Now it will be January or February before we see that “sunny clime.” Still, I am told by those who have been there that February, March and April are the months for it. I want to see it only under the most favorable circumstances, so am content to wait. To-night we are to attend a concert of the choicest music, given by some of Germany’s finest musicians. We have had two seasons of opera already. I don’t know how many more we are to have. Booth is to be here by and by, and we mean to give him a welcome indeed! As for chronicling all I am doing, I can’t think of wearying you to that extent. But be sure I have no idle days. They are all as full as they can hold. They will do to talk about in that wonderful “by and by” we have laid out in the future. I am sure there are some points in your letter I have not taken up; but I dare not take them up now, lest such length of letter frighten you into breaking off the correspondence. So much valuable time as the reading exacts—how can you spare it? Besides, those points will keep!
I shall expect a full and true and most minute report of your entire visit. Don’t keep an item back. It will be ever so mean if you did not write that “next Sunday.” Won’t you be glad you did, if you did, when you read this? But indeed and indeed, I am very grateful for your letters, and am your friend to my finger tips.
L. G. C.
Munich, November 18, 1882.
MUNICH.
OUR second Sunday letter just received and read “twice over.” You can’t realize the pleasure it gives me. No woman is material for a full-blooded Bohemian. Giving myself, as I am trying to do, wholly up to this life, few would believe what a homesick heart is nearly all the time beating beneath my vivacious words—a heart sick for the home broken up forever; for the dear ones that will meet me no more on any threshold this side the grave. Think how I must feel, reading your words about my lost home—how they take me back to it. I shall never see it again. I could not bear it. Yet I am very grateful to you for thinking to tell me about it; the beautiful tree; the kindly intention to send me a leaf; the plan to see it again. May I tell you such thoughtfulness has the tenderness of a woman in it? My mother would have done the same. Thank you for it. And believe me, my heart has never before so accepted you as a friend. It is very gratifying to me to know that you are so delighted with M——. I have always thought it one of the most beautiful, picturesque bits of earth my eyes have ever seen.
Did I not write that Heidelberg, so famous in song and story and guide-books for its scenery, reminds me of it? It is fortunate you are such a walker and climber. No one who is not can know the beauty of this little planet. Be sure to go over all Mr. W——’s hill, or, rather, his chain. I think you will say it is unequaled, or almost so. If you could only have him for a companion, he would show you many points we have enjoyed so many times, morning, noon, and night. There is a moonrise view that would make you speechless with ecstasy. He found it out for the rest of us. One special hillside is full of wild flowers in the later springtime, where in the earlier spring he has a charming little sugarcamp. We have had such frolics and picnics in the sugar-making season! Be sure to find “Maple Point,” and the oak tree with the gnarled roots, where we sat to gaze and talk. You can see away across the river there, even to the home of your friends.