My friend Norton, whom I met first on this very blue lake water,
had no business to go back to Boston again, any more than you.
I was waiting for S. at the railroad station on Thursday, and thinking
of you, naturally enough,--it seemed so short a while since we were
there together. I managed to get hold of Georgie as she was crossing
the rails, and packed her in opposite my mother and beside me, and was
thinking myself so clever, when you sent that rascally courier for
her! I never forgave him any of his behavior after his imperativeness
on that occasion.
And so she is getting nice and strong? Ask her, please, when you
write, with my love, whether, when she stands now behind the great
stick, one can see much of her on each side?
So you have been seeing the Pope and all his Easter performances? I
congratulate you, for I suppose it is something like "Positively the
last appearance on any stage." What was the use of thinking about
_him?_ You should have had your own thoughts about what was to
come after him. I don't mean that Roman Catholicism will die out so
quickly. It will last pretty nearly as long as Protestantism, which
keeps it up; but I wonder what is to come next. That is the main
question just now for everybody.
So you are coming round to Venice, after all? We shall all have to
come to it, depend upon it, some way or another. There never has been
anything in any other part of the world like Venetian strength well
developed.
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