I am telling you nothing of our summer, most all of which was passed in Switzerland. Germany is good, but Switzerland is better. _How_ good Switzerland is, is something that can't be described in words. The healthiness of it passes all utterance--the air, the roads, the mountains, the customs, the institutions, the people. Not a breath of art, poetry, esthetics, morbidness, or "suggestions"! It is all there, solid meat and drink for the sick body and soul, ready to be turned to, and do you infallible good when the nervous and gas-lit side of life has had too much play. What a see-saw life is, between the elemental things and the others! We must have both; but aspiration for aspiration, I think that of the over-cultured and exquisite person for the insipidity of health is the more pathetic. After the suggestiveness, decay and over-refinement of Florence this winter, I shall be hungry enough for the eternal elements to be had in Schweiz. I didn't do any high climbing, for which my legs and _Schwindeligkeit_ both unfit me, but any amount of solid moderate walking (say four to six hours a day), which did me a lot of good. I envy the climbers, though! Now that my brain begins to work again, I have mapped out a profitable course of winter reading, _Naturphilosophie_ and _Kunstgeschichte_, and, if the boys' school is only as good as it is cracked up to be, we shall have had a good year. Alice is very well, and much refreshed in spite of maternal cares and perplexities.... Love from both of us to both of you, and wishes for a good winter. Love also to all your family circle, especially Annie, and to Mrs. Wynne if she be near. W. J. _To Miss Grace Ashburner._ 6 PIAZZA DELL INDIPENDENZA FLORENCE, _Oct. 19, 1892_. MY DEAR GRACE,--It is needless to say that your long and delightful reply written by Theodora's self-effacing hand reached us duly, and that I have "been on the point" of writing to you again ever since. That "point" as you well know, is one to which somehow one seems long to cleave without jumping off. But at last here goes--irrevocably! I did not expect that in your condition you would be either so conscientious or so energetic as to send so immediate and full a return, and I must expressly stipulate, my dear old friend, that the sole condition upon which I write now is that you shall not feel that I expect a single word of answer. (Needless to say, however, how much any infringement of this condition on your part will be _enjoyed_.)