It is like Sorrento,--so like that I can quite dream of
being there. And when I get here I enter another life. The world
recedes; I am out of it; it ceases to influence; its bustle and noise
die away in the far distance; and here is no winter, an open-air
life,--a quaint, rude, wild wilderness sort of life, both rude and
rich; but when I am here I write more letters to friends than ever I
do elsewhere. The mail comes only twice a week, and then is the event
of the day. My old rabbi and I here set up our tent, he with German,
and Greek, and Hebrew, devouring all sorts of black-letter books, and
I spinning ideal webs out of bits that he lets fall here and there.
I have long thought that I would write you again when I got here, and
so I do. I have sent North to have them send me the "Harper's Weekly,"
in which your new story is appearing, and have promised myself
leisurely to devour and absorb every word of it.
While I think of it I want to introduce to you a friend of mine, a
most noble man, Mr. Owen, for some years our ambassador at Naples, now
living a literary and scholar life in America. His father was Robert
Dale Owen, the theorist and communist you may have heard of in England
some years since.
Years ago, in Naples, I visited Mr. Owen for the first time, and found
him directing his attention to the phenomena of spiritism. He had
stumbled upon some singular instances of it accidentally, and he had
forthwith instituted a series of researches and experiments on the
subject, some of which he showed me.
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