Duveneck[105] spent a most delightful evening here a while ago, and left a big portfolio of photos of Böcklin's pictures and a big bunch of cigars for me two days later. I wish I didn't always feel like a _phrase-monger_ with honest artists like him. However there are some fellows who seem phrase-mongers to me, X----, _e.g._, so it's "square."... We have a cook, Raffaello, the most modest and faithful of his sex. Our manner of communication with him is _awful_; but he finishes all our sentences for us, and, strange to say, just as we would have finished them if we could. Alice swears we must bring him home to America. Should you think it safe? He seems to have no friends or diversions here, and no love except for his saucepans. But I dread the responsibility of being foster-father to him in our cold and uncongenial land. It would be different if I spoke his lingo.--What do _you_ think? And _what_ a pretty lingo it is! Italian and German seem to me _the_ languages. The mongrels French and English might drop out! Apropos to English, I return your slip [about the teaching of English?] "as per request," having been amused at the manifestation of the ruling passion in you. I don't care how incorrect language may be if it only has fitness of epithet, energy and clearness. But I do pity the poor English Department. I see they are talking in England of more study of their own tongue in the schools being required.... Mark Twain dined with us last night, in company with the good Villari and the charming Mrs. Villari; but there was no chance then to ask him to sing Nora McCarty. He's a dear man, and there'll be a chance yet. He is in a delightful villa at Settignano, and says he has written more in the past four months than he could have done in two years at Hartford. Well! good-bye, dear old friend. Yours ever, WM. JAMES. _To Henry James._ FLORENCE, _Mar. 17, 1893_.