dship to lie awake awhile, nights, for
this subdued roar has exactly the sound of a steady rain beating upon
a roof. It is so healing to the spirit; and it bears up the thread of
one's imaginings as the accompaniment bears up a song.

While Livy and Miss Spaulding have been writing at this table, I have
sat tilted back, near by, with a pipe and the last Atlantic, and read
Charley Warner's article with prodigious enjoyment. I think it is
exquisite. I think it must be the roundest and broadest and completest
short essay he has ever written. It is clear, and compact, and
charmingly done.

The hotel grounds join and communicate with the Castle grounds; so we
and the children loaf in the winding paths of those leafy vastnesses a
great deal, and drink beer and listen to excellent music.

When we first came to this hotel, a couple of weeks ago, I pointed to a
house across the river, and said I meant to rent the centre room on
the 3d floor for a work-room. Jokingly we got to speaking of it as my
office; and amused ourselves with watching "my people" daily in their
small grounds and trying to make out what we could of their dress, &c.,
without a glass. Well, I loafed along there one day and found on that
house the only sign of the kind on that side of the river: "Moblirte
Wohnung zu Vermiethen!" I went in and rented that very room which I
had long ago selected. There was only one other room in the whole
double-house unrented.

(It occurs to me that I made a great mistake in not thinking to deliver
a very bad German speech, every other sentence pieced out with English,
at the Bayard Taylor banquet in New York. I think I could have made it
one of the features of the occasion.)--[He used this plan at a gathering
of the American students in Heidelberg, on July 4th, with great effect;
so his idea was not wasted.]

We left Hartford before the end of March, and I have been idle ever
since. I have waited for a call to go to work--I knew it would come.
Well, it began to come a week ago; my note-book comes out more and more
frequently every day since; 3 days ago I concluded to move my manuscript
over to my den. Now the call is loud and decided at last. So tomorrow I
shall begin regular, steady work, and stick to it till middle of July or
1st August, when I look for Twichell; we will then walk about Germany 2
or 3 weeks, and then I'll go to work again--(perhaps in Munich.)

We both send a power of love to the Howellses, and we do wis