m the milking of
the cows down to the great wheels (which look like millstones) and the
completed cheese. Milking is a process with which you are, perhaps, not
familiar. It is done with the help of a maiden and a three-legged
stool, while the cow goes on chewing the worn-out cud of her last meal,
occasionally giving a Cenci-like glance of approbation.

But I won't tell you about that; I will let you in the secrets of
Parmesan-cheese making, so that when you are eating it grated on
macaroni you may know what an old stager you have to do with. The milk
is put in great vats just as it comes from the _mesdames les vaches_;
there it remains, occasionally turned around, not churned, with a
wooden paddle, until it becomes a solid substance.

When it is hard enough to handle it is put into large round wooden
forms and allowed to remain untouched--for how long do you think? _One
year!_ Then they put it under the oil _regime_--that is to say,
olive-oil is poured through the cheese at regular intervals until the
rind is as black and thick as leather. In four years it is ready to be
sold. Each cheese weighs several hundred pounds, is a foot thick, and
is as big as a cart-wheel. We eat it every day for luncheon and dinner.
I like it so much better, fresh and straight from the farm (if anything
four years old can be called fresh), than when stale and grated.

ROME, _1888_.

My dear Aunt,--Leo XIII.'s jubilee has been the means of bringing the
world to Rome. Every day during these last weeks we have watched the
carts passing our house piled with huge cases which contained the
presents destined for the Holy Father.

The streets are filled with pilgrims from everywhere. One cannot look
in any direction without seeing processions of nuns, priests, and monks
of all nations and denominations, from the dingy brown Franciscans, the
Capucines with their white mantles displaying their bare legs, to the
youthful disciples of the Propaganda in their brilliant scarlet
cassocks, not to speak of the _forestiere_ armed with their red
Baedekers, who are doing Rome and at the same time _doing_ the Pope's
Jubilee.

Everything and every one on the way to the Vatican.

We went to see the gifts, which are exposed in many rooms on the ground
floor of the Vatican. There was an enormous quantity of things of every
description, useful, ornamental, and superfluous. The windmills, bells,
every sort of vehicle, rowboats, sailboats, and every modern inv