As a reward for your reformation I write to you on this precious sheet.
You see I have come to be wonderfully attached to Heidelberg, the
beautiful, the quaint, the historically poetic, learned and picturesque
old town on the Neckar. It seems like another home. So I could not show
my appreciation of you in a more complimentary way than by sending this
little series of pictures. Have you ever been here, I wonder? You did
not say, but you wrote as if you knew it by sight as well as by heart.
As I cannot know, I will venture an explanation. The panorama speaks for
itself. Put on your "specs" and look at the castle, half way up the
_berg_, "the Jettenhuhl, a wooded spur of the Konigestuhl." Look at it
from the "Terrasse." Thus you'll get something of an idea of it. The
Gesprente Thurm is the one that was blown up by the French. The
thickness of the walls, twenty-one feet, and the solid masonry, held it
so well that only a fragment, as it were, gave way. It still hangs as if
ready to be replaced. "Das Grosse Fass Gebaude," too, you will have no
difficulty in making out. If you only had it with its 49,000 gallons of
wine, but wouldn't you divide with your neighbors! The columns in the
portico that shows in the Schlosshof are the four brought from
Charlemagne's palace at Ingelheim by the Count Palatine Ludwig, some
time between 1508-44. The Zum Ritter has nothing to do with the castle,
but is an ancient structure (1592) in the Renaissance style, and one of
the few that escaped destruction in 1693. It is a beautiful, highly
ornamental building, and I wish you could see it, if you have not seen
it.

All the above information, I beg you to believe, I do not intend you
to think was evolved from my inner consciousness, but gathered from
the--nearest guide-book!

I am so much obliged to you for mapping out Switzerland to me. I have
been trying my best to get all those "passes" into my brain. Now, thanks
to your letter, I have them all in the handiest kind of a bunch. Ariel
like, "I'll do my bidding gently," and as surely, if I get there. But
there are dreadful reports of floods and roads caved in and bridges
swept away and snows and--enough of such exciting items as sets one
thinking--"to go or not to go?" We are this far on the way. Reached
here this afternoon. Have spent the evening sauntering in the gardens,
the Conversationhaus, the bazaar, mingling with the throng, listening to
the band, and comparing what it is with what it was. It was a gay and
curious spectacle, but on the whole had "the banquet-hall deserted"
look. The situation is most beautiful. It lies, you know, at the
entrance of the Black Forest, among picturesque, thickly-wooded hills,
in the valley of the Oos, and extends up the slope of some of the hills.
The Oos is a most turbid, turbulent stream; dashes through part of the
town with angry, headlong speed. There is an avenue along its bank of
oaks, limes and maples, bordered with flower-beds and shrubberies, and
adorned with fountains and handsome villas. We shall devote to-morrow to
seeing all there is to be seen, and go to Strassburg to-morrow evening
for two or three days. From there to Constance, and then hold _our_
"Council" as to further movements.
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