There was a report, on our arriving, that the Triple Alliance representatives are instructed to do everything to bring the conference into discredit, but this is now denied. It is said that their programme is changed, and things look like it. On the whole, though no one is sanguine, there is more hope. May 21. In the morning went with Dr. Holls to a Whitsunday service at the great old church here. There was a crowd, impressive chorals, and a sermon at least an hour long. At our request, we were given admirable places in the organ-loft, and sat at the side of the organist as he managed that noble instrument. It was sublime. After the closing voluntary Holls played remarkably well. To me the most striking feature in the service was a very earnest prayer made by the clergyman for the conference. During the afternoon we also visited the old prison near the Vijver, where the De Witts and other eminent prisoners of state were confined, and in front of which the former were torn in pieces by the mob. Sadly interesting was a collection of instruments of torture, which had the effect of making me better satisfied with our own times than I sometimes am. In the evening, with our minister, Mr. Newel, and the Dean of Ely, his guest, to an exceedingly pleasant "tea" at the house of Baroness Gravensteen, and met a number of interesting people, among them a kindly old gentleman who began diplomatic life as a British attache at Washington in the days of Webster and Clay, and gave me interesting accounts of them. The queer letters and crankish proposals which come in every day are amazing. I have just added to my collection of diplomatic curiosities a letter from the editor of a Democratic paper in southern Illinois, addressed to me as ambassador at Mayence, which he evidently takes to be the capital of Germany, asking me to look after a great party of Western newspaper men who are to go up the Rhine this summer and make a brief stay in the above-named capital of the empire. I also receive very many letters of introduction, which of course make large demands upon my time. The number of epistles, also, which come in from public meetings in large and small American towns is very great, some evidently representing no persons other than the writers. As I write the above, I open mechanically a letter from a peace meeting assembled in Ledyard, Connecticut, composed of "Rogerine Quakers"; but what a "Rogerine Quaker" is I know not. Some of these letters are touching, and some have a comic side. A very good one comes from May Wright Sewall; would that all the others were as thoughtful!