ntral
detail is a distant & stately snow-hump that rises above & behind
black-forested hills, & its sloping vast buttresses, velvety & sun-
polished, with purple shadows between, make the sort of picture we
knew that time we walked in Switzerland in the days of our youth.

From this letter, which is of January 7, 1904, we gather that the
weather had greatly improved, and with it Mrs. Clemens's health,
notwithstanding she had an alarming attack in December. One of the
stories he had finished was "The $30,000 Bequest." The work mentioned,
which would not see print until after his death, was a continuation of
those autobiographical chapters which for years he had been setting down
as the mood seized him.

He experimented with dictation, which he had tried long before with
Redpath, and for a time now found it quite to his liking. He dictated
some of his copyright memories, and some anecdotes and episodes; but his
amanuensis wrote only longhand, which perhaps hampered him, for he tired
of it by and by and the dictations were discontinued.

Among these notes there is one elaborate description of the Villa di
Quarto, dictated at the end of the winter, by which time we are not
surprised to find he had become much attached to the place. The
Italian spring was in the air, and it was his habit to grow fond of his
surroundings. Some atmospheric paragraphs of these impressions invite us
here:

We are in the extreme south end of the house, if there is any such
thing as a south end to a house, whose orientation cannot be
determined by me, because I am incompetent in all cases where an
object does not point directly north & south. This one slants
across between, & is therefore a confusion. This little private
parlor is in one of the two corners of what I call the south end of
the house. The sun rises in such a way that all the morning it is
pouring its light through the 33 glass doors or windows which pierce
the side of the house which looks upon the terrace & garden; the
rest of the day the light floods this south end of the house, as I
call it; at noon the sun is directly above Florence yonder in the
distance in the plain, directly across those architectural features
which have been so familiar to the world in pictures for some
centuries, the Duomo, the Campanile, the Tomb of the Medici, & the
beautiful tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; in this position it be