infant. And my conduct very much resembled that of the excellent
Philip II. when he heard the fall of Antwerp,--for I went to her
door, screeching through the key-hole 'Vicksburg is ours!' just as
that other 'pere de famille,' more potent, but I trust not more
respectable than I, conveyed the news to his Infanta. (Fide, for
the incident, an American work on the Netherlands, i. p. 263, and
the authorities there cited.) It is contemptible on my part to
speak thus frivolously of events which will stand out in such golden
letters so long as America has a history, but I wanted to illustrate
the yearning for sympathy which I felt. You who were among people
grim and self-contained usually, who, I trust, were falling on each
other's necks in the public streets, shouting, with tears in their
eyes and triumph in their hearts, can picture my isolation.

"I have never faltered in my faith, and in the darkest hours, when
misfortunes seemed thronging most thickly upon us, I have never felt
the want of anything to lean against; but I own I did feel like
shaking hands with a few hundred people when I heard of our Fourth
of July, 1863, work, and should like to have heard and joined in an
American cheer or two.

"I have not much to say of matters here to interest you. We have
had an intensely hot, historically hot, and very long and very dry
summer. I never knew before what a drought meant. In Hungary the
suffering is great, and the people are killing the sheep to feed the
pigs with the mutton. Here about Vienna the trees have been almost
stripped of foliage ever since the end of August. There is no glory
in the grass nor verdure in anything.

"In fact, we have nothing green here but the Archduke Max, who