In the autumn of 1886 he sailed for Europe to marry his old friend Edith Carow, and for a brief period led a life of leisure and travel. Only very rarely in his busy existence had he time for just that life again, and the consequence is that some of his letters at that period have an unusual value. He humorously described some of his travels in Italy in a letter dated December, 1886, as follows: “My lack of knowledge of the language has given me some soul-harrowing moments,--a mixture of broken English with German and French proving but an indifferent substitute for Italian, so I sometimes get what I do not want, as when yesterday, an effort to state that after dinner we wished only black coffee, expressed with deprecatory waves of the hand and the idiomatic phrase, ‘c’est genuch’ produced in addition, cheese, pastry, and fruit, all brought by the waiter in a wild hope that some one of those might satisfy what he evidently supposed was my untranslatable demand.” A little later, from Sorrento, he writes in characteristic fashion, showing that even in so romantic and enthralling a spot as Rome he was still “on duty bent” from the standpoint of writing articles for the _Century_. He says: “I finished six articles for the _Century_ on ranch life while in Rome and sent them off. I do not know whether the _Century_ will want them or not. I read them all to Edith and her corrections and help were most valuable to me. Now I am wondering why my ‘Life of Benton’ has not come out. Here, [at Sorrento] I generally take a moderate walk with Edith every morning, and then a brisk rush by myself. I had no idea that it was in me to enjoy the ‘dolce far niente’ even as long as I have. Luckily, Edith would dislike an extended stay in Europe as much as I would.” In this letter, after speaking of ranch losses which necessitated selling his beloved hunter, Sagamore, he signs himself, “Your extravagant and irrelevant but affectionate brother, the White Knight,” the latter being a reference to the character in “Alice in Wonderland,” from which enchanting book we invariably quoted in ordinary conversation or letters.