Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER V. We cannot be French very much longer, and must turn our tongue into German. E. does not accompany us, so our own interpreters we shall have to be. Our carriage contained, beside ourselves, a French gentleman and an Italian gentleman, ' we four, and no more.' We sped on through villas and villages, and fields of bright wild flowers, with but little of interest, however, to detail. Our Italian seemed troubled in regard to an apparently new glove which he tore badly in raising a window. After a long, disconsolate look at it, he took from his travelling bag, needle and thread, and went carefully at work to repair the injury, but made a bad tangle of it. As F. had implements handy,including a thimble, she offered to mend it for him. He accepted graciously, and his handsome face grew luminous as he watched his pet glove grow whole under her deft fingers. What might he do for us ? Would we drink wine with him ? ' No, thanks/ we said. What else he offered, to show his gratitude, we could not understand; when out from his pocket he took a phrase-book of Italian and English words, and pointed to the sentence, ' Shall I sing for you ?' We gladly acquiesced, and to our great delight he poured forth one of the grandest, sweetest voices I ever in my life listened to. It was like Brignoli's in his best days. He sung the choicest airs from different operas, and warbled, in his own musical language, tender songs. The distinguished-looking French gentleman joined us in thanking him for making the hours pass so delightfully — for it is a long run from Paris to Geneva. We find fellow passengers, in this country, much more thoughtful of the comfort of others than they are in England or America. We also like the steam-cars here much better than our own, unless one always rides in a...