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The view from these bird-cages is my despair. The pictures change from
one enchanting aspect to another in ceaseless procession, never keeping
one form half an hour, and never taking on an unlovely one.
And then Heidelberg on a dark night! It is massed, away down there,
almost right under us, you know, and stretches off toward the valley.
Its curved and interlacing streets are a cobweb, beaded thick with
lights--a wonderful thing to see; then the rows of lights on the arched
bridges, and their glinting reflections in the water; and away at the
far end, the Eisenbahnhof, with its twenty solid acres of glittering
gas-jets, a huge garden, as one may say, whose every plant is a flame.
These balconies are the darlingest things. I have spent all the morning
in this north one. Counting big and little, it has 256 panes of glass
in it; so one is in effect right out in the free sunshine, and yet
sheltered from wind and rain--and likewise doored and curtained from
whatever may be going on in the bedroom. It must have been a noble
genius who devised this hotel. Lord, how blessed is the repose, the
tranquillity of this place! Only two sounds; the happy clamor of the
birds in the groves, and the muffled music of the Neckar, tumbling over
the opposing dykes. It is no hardship to lie awake awhile, nights, for
this subdued roar has exactly the sound of a steady rain beating upon
a roof. It is so healing to the spirit; and it bears up the thread of
one's imaginings as the accompaniment bears up a song.
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