m.

The letter, or a part of it, ran as follows:

"Of course such weather as this is not to be shut out-of-doors; we feed
on it; we drink it in; we bathe in it, body and soul. Ah, my friend,
know a June in Venice before you die! Don't dare to die until you have
become saturated with the aerial-aquatic beauty of this Divine Sea-City!

"Oh, I was about to tell you something when the charms of this Syren
made me half-delirious and of course I forgot all else in life--I always
do so. Well, as we leave in a few days for the delectable Dolonites, we
are making our rounds of P. P. C.'s,--that we are revisiting every nook
and corner in the lagoon so dear to us. We invariably do this; it is the
most delicious leave-taking imaginable. If I were only Niobe I'd water
these shores with tears--I'm sure I would; but you know I never weep; I
never did; I don't know how; there is not a drop of brine in my whole
composition.

"Dear me! how I do rattle on--but you know my moods and will make due
allowance for what might strike the cold, unfeeling world as being
garrulity.

"We had resolved to visit that most enchanting of all Italian shrines,
San Francisco del Deserto. We had not been there for an age; you know it
is rather a long pull over, and one waits for the most perfect hour when
one ventures upon the outskirts of the lagoon.

"Oh, the unspeakable loveliness of that perfect day! The mellowing haze
that veiled the water; the heavenly blue of the sea, a mirror of the
sky, and floating in between the two, so that one could not be quite
sure whether it slumbered in the lap of the sea or hung upon the bosom
of the sky, that ideal summer island--San Francisco del Deserto.

"You know it is only a few acres in extent--not more than six, I fancy,
and four-fifths of it are walled about with walls that stand knee-deep
in sea-grasses. Along, and above it, are thrust the tapering tops of
those highly decorative cypresses without which Italy would not be
herself at all. There is such a monastery there--an ideal one, with
cloister, and sundial, and marble-curbed well, and all that; at least
so I am told; we poor feminine creatures are not permitted to cross the
thresholds of these Holy Houses. This reminds me of a remark I heard
made by a very clever woman who wished to have a glimpse of the interior
of that impossible Monte Casino on the mountain top between Rome and
Naples. Of course she was refused admission; she turned upon the poor
Be