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To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:
VILLA VIVIANI
SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE. Oct. 22, '92.
DEAR SUE,--We are getting wonted. The open fires have driven away the
cold and the doubt, and now a cheery spirit pervades the place. Livy
and the Kings and Mademoiselle having been taking their tea a number of
times, lately, on the open terrace with the city and the hills and the
sunset for company. I stop work, a few minutes, as a rule, when the sun
gets down to the hilltops west of Florence, and join the tea-group to
wonder and exclaim. There is always some new miracle in the view, a new
and exquisite variation in the show, a variation which occurs every 15
minutes between dawn and night. Once early in the morning, a multitude
of white villas not before perceived, revealed themselves on the far
hills; then we recognized that all those great hills are snowed thick
with them, clear to the summit.
The variety of lovely effects, the infinitude of change, is something
not to be believed by any who has not seen it. No view that I am
acquainted with in the world is at all comparable to this for delicacy,
charm, exquisiteness, dainty coloring, and bewildering rapidity of
change. It keeps a person drunk with pleasure all the time. Sometimes
Florence ceases to be substantial, and becomes just a faint soft dream,
with domes and towers of air, and one is persuaded that he might blow it
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