y days now that I
am here alone on the continent of Europe. The warmth of our Californian
sun must have entered our very hearts, for nowhere in all the world but
there are found no strangers.

The grapes are not all picked as yet, and the vineyards are lively
indeed with gaily dressed peasant girls, cutting and tying up the vines
for the winter. There is a great difference between Catholic and
Lutheran Germany in this one regard of dress; in all the Protestant
districts the prevailing colour is a dull blue, while in Catholic parts
the dress seems to have no end of colour and brilliant adornment; for an
artist the latter is more pleasing, but for such a thoughtful moralist
as yourself, I know the peasant girls in blue frocks would be
preferable.

There are very few students in the city now and scarcely a traveller is
to be seen, except now and then a stray one may be noticed wandering
about the old cathedral or counting the restored statues on the river
bridge. I always feel a longing to speak to these late birds of passage
for they look so forlorn without their mates, that they make me think of
my own sad plight so far away from you all; when the lectures begin I
hope that I will be more satisfied than I am now.

Every day I go to Vespers at one of the churches, and I enjoy this bit
of the day more than you could believe. It is beautiful just at dusk to
enter the church in the Market Place, which is near my hotel, and there
in the gloom, lighted only by the tapers at the shrines and where some
of the worshipers are kneeling, each with a small wax light to illumine
the Prayer Books, to bow with them and receive the blessing from the
priest and to be touched by the Holy Water; then the Ave Maria, how I
love to hear it chanted with such heartfelt praise by the old and
trembling men and women, who throw their whole spirit into the melody.
The melody, I know, could not bear cold criticism, but when I kneel
there beneath the great, gray vault and see their breath ascending in
the cold air, bearing like incense their prayers to Heaven, and hear the
subdued strains of the organ, I feel that it is not the music of this
world, and my heart is moved and I join in the grand hymn, mingling my
soft Latin words with their glorious German.

The priest has passed down the aisle and sprinkled the Holy Water over
us with the aspergil, the boys bearing the censers, preceding him have
passed from sight with him behind the dark curtain a