luncheon time at our tarven, but we all went
together as fur as the Cathedral. It is a noble buildin', covered with
red, white and black marble, elegantly ornamented with panels and
sculpture. And the hull meetin'-house is so beautiful, that it wuz
remarked that "it ort to be kep' in a glass case."

Inside, the ceiling is one hundred and thirty-five feet high--good
land! I told Josiah I wuz glad I did not have to whitewash or paper it
overhead, for it 'most killed us Methodist Episcopal sisters to paper
our meetin'-house ceilin' which wuz only twenty feet high, and put a
hundred and fifteen feet on top of that and where would we be, we
never could done it in the world. The interior is full of statutes and
pictures by Michael Angelo and other great sculptors and famous
painters.

The Campanile or bell tower near it is most three hundred feet high,
and a beautiful view is to be seen from the top way off onto the
fur-off mountains, the city and the valley of the Arno, or that is I
hearn so; I didn't climb up myself to see, bein' more'n willin' to
take Dorothy's word and Robert Strong's to that effect.

The bronze doors in the Baptistry are a sight to see. Michael Angelo
said they wuz worthy to be the gates of paradise, but I could tell Mr.
Angelo, and would if he had said it to me, that he little knew how
beautiful them gates are and we ortn't to compare anything earthly to
'em. Jest think, Mr. Angelo, I'd say, of an immense gate being made
of one pearl, the idee! we can't hardly git into our heads any idees
here below, and never will till the winds of heaven blow aginst our
tired senses and brighten 'em up.

But I wuzn't neighbor to Mr. Angelo; he died several years before I
wuz born, four or five hundred years before, so of course I couldn't
advise him for his good. He lost a sight and never knowed it, poor
creeter!

The Ufizzi and Pitti galleries contain enough pictures and statutes to
make 'em more'n comfortable, I should think; beautiful pictures and
beautiful statutes I must say. One of the most interestin' things to
me in the hull collection wuz the original drawings of the old masters
with their names signed to 'em in their own handwritin'. It wuz like
liftin' up the mysterious curtain a little ways and peerin' into the
past. Michael Angelo's sketches in chalk and charcoal; Titian's
drawings, little buds, as you may say from which they bloomed into
immortal beauty; Rubens, Albert Durer and a throng of others.