onfidence."

He declares that he will have no more couriers; but possibly he could
have employed one to advantage on the trip out of Italy, for it was a
desperately hard one, with bad connections and delayed telegrams. When,
after thirty-six hours weary, continuous traveling, they arrived at
last in Munich in a drizzle and fog, and were domiciled in their winter
quarters, at No. 1a, Karlstrasse, they felt that they had reached the
home of desolation itself, the very throne of human misery.

And the rooms were so small, the conveniences so meager, and the
porcelain stove was grim, ghastly, dismal, intolerable! So Livy and
Clara Spaulding sat down forlorn and cried, and I retired to a
private place to pray. By and by we all retired to our narrow
German beds, and when Livy and I had finished talking across the
room it was all decided that we should rest twenty-four hours, then
pay whatever damages were required and straightway fly to the south
of France.

The rooms had been engaged by letter, months before, of their
proprietress, Fraulein Dahlweiner, who had met them at the door with
a lantern in her hand, full of joy in their arrival and faith in her
ability to make them happy. It was a faith that was justified. Next
morning, when they all woke, rested, the weather had cleared, there were
bright fires in the rooms, the world had taken on a new aspect. Fraulein
Dahlweiner, the pathetic, hard-working little figure, became almost
beautiful in their eyes in her efforts for their comfort. She arranged
larger rooms and better conveniences for them. Their location was
central and there was a near-by park. They had no wish to change.
Clemens, in his letter to Howells, boasts that he brought the party
through from Rome himself, and that they never had so little trouble
before; but in looking over this letter, thirty years later, he
commented, "Probably a lie."

He secured a room some distance away for his work, but then could not
find his Swiss note-book. He wrote Twichell that he had lost it, and
that after all he might not be obliged to write a volume of travels.
But the notebook turned up and the work on the new book proceeded. For a
time it went badly. He wrote many chapters, only to throw them aside.
He had the feeling that he had somehow lost the knack of descriptive
narrative. He had become, as it seemed, too didactic. He thought his
description was inclined to be too literal, his humor m