During his stay at Baden-Baden he received a letter from Mrs. Tristram,
scolding him for the scanty tidings he had sent to his friends of the
Avenue d'Iena, and begging to be definitely informed that he had not
concocted any horrid scheme for wintering in outlying regions, but was
coming back sanely and promptly to the most comfortable city in the
world. Newman's answer ran as follows:--

"I supposed you knew I was a miserable letter-writer, and didn't expect
anything of me. I don't think I have written twenty letters of pure
friendship in my whole life; in America I conducted my correspondence
altogether by telegrams. This is a letter of pure friendship; you have
got hold of a curiosity, and I hope you will value it. You want to know
everything that has happened to me these three months. The best way to
tell you, I think, would be to send you my half dozen guide-books, with
my pencil-marks in the margin. Wherever you find a scratch or a cross,
or a 'Beautiful!' or a 'So true!' or a 'Too thin!' you may know that
I have had a sensation of some sort or other. That has been about my
history, ever since I left you. Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Germany,
Italy, I have been through the whole list, and I don't think I am any
the worse for it. I know more about Madonnas and church-steeples than I
supposed any man could. I have seen some very pretty things, and shall
perhaps talk them over this winter, by your fireside. You see, my face
is not altogether set against Paris. I have had all kinds of plans and
visions, but your letter has blown most of them away. 'L'appetit vient
en mangeant,' says the French proverb, and I find that the more I see
of the world the more I want to see. Now that I am in the shafts, why
shouldn't I trot to the end of the course? Sometimes I think of the
far East, and keep rolling the names of Eastern cities under my tongue:
Damascus and Bagdad, Medina and Mecca. I spent a week last month in the