Fields, who proved most delightful traveling companions.
While Mrs. Stowe fully enjoyed her foreign experiences, she was so
thoroughly American in every fibre of her being that she was always
thankful to return to her own land and people. She could not,
therefore, in any degree reciprocate the views of Mr. Ruskin on this
subject, as expressed in the following letter, received soon after her
return to Andover:--
GENEVA, _June_ 18, 1860.
DEAR MRS. STOWE,--It takes a great deal, when I am at Geneva, to make
me wish myself anywhere else, and, of all places else, in London;
nevertheless, I very heartily wish at this moment that I were looking
out on the Norwood Hills, and were expecting you and the children to
breakfast to-morrow.
I had very serious thoughts, when I received your note, of running
home; but I expected that very day an American friend, Mr. S., who I
thought would miss me more here than you would in London; so I stayed.
What a dreadful thing it is that people should have to go to America
again, after coming to Europe! It seems to me an inversion of the
order of nature. I think America is a sort of "United" States of
Probation, out of which all wise people, being once delivered, and
having obtained entrance into this better world, should never be
expected to return (sentence irremediably ungrammatical), particularly
when they have been making themselves cruelly pleasant to friends
here.
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