Do you have much fruit this year? I am out of patience with Europe. I never find fruit here,--it is always a “scarce year,” they say. Indeed, there was none in all the Rhine Valley. Little gnarly apples are two and three cents apiece; prunes, which are only the plums which grow here, dried, are fifty cents a pound, and I have searched the town over without success for a little dried apple. All oranges here are always either sour or bitter. I have nearly forgotten, but it seems to me that we had better fruit arrangements at home. You see by this that I am quite hungry, don’t you, or I shouldn’t write of it. Now I think I have finished for this time. I have let my letter wait two days and my eyes are better. Ever your Sis CLARA Returning to Carlsruhe, she continued her oversight of American relief for French destitution by correspondence, though still suffering greatly with her eyes. She passed “some very dull weeks, very green and shady, with exceedingly long nights”; after the acute pain was over, she learned to write with bandaged eyes, and wrote a good deal. Her friends Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon were in London and were not satisfied to have her in Germany alone. They sent her peremptory orders to be ready to accompany them when they came, as they were presently to come, down the Rhine. She went with them, left Carlsruhe, visited Strassburg on her last tour of inspection, and set out for London by way of Paris. On reaching Paris, they encountered an American family by the name of Taylor, friends of the Sheldons, who had just left London for a tour of Italy and besought Miss Barton to accompany them. Hastily she changed her plans, and, after six weeks’ travel in Italy, she came to London. She had dropped her diary altogether, and her correspondence with her relatives had nearly ceased on account of her impaired eyesight, but in London she wrote the story of her wanderings to her sister Mrs. Vassall. The last page is missing and the letter ends abruptly, leaving her in Venice. The Italian tour was finished, however, and in the early summer she arrived in London. NO. 5 HEWSON STREET--WANREY STREET WALWORTH ROAD LONDON, July 5th, 1872 DEAREST SISTER: