New Letters of an Idle Man (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1913 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III ITALIAN WINTERS AND GERMAN SUMMERS 1888-1891 Reflections on the Far East--Bliemchens--Ibsen--German and American Style--The Japanese Experiment--American Retrogression--Rome in the Sixties--Christmas--The Carnival--George Bradford--Perugia--On Drinking Tea--Middle Names--Lord Dufferin--On American Domestics and Manners--Italian Nerves--The Grand Climacterio--On Tragedy--On 'Taking in a Newspaper'--A Great Snowstorm at Naples--New and Old Harvard--On Habits before Going to Bed--La Cava and the Amalfi Road--Professor Sophocles--German Writers on America--The Temperaments of East and West. Dresden, Tuesday, 18 September, 1888. My Dear H., --I congratulate you upon having had a good summer, diversified by agreeable variety; and I don't think I should have been made homesick by the summer solitariness of Boston. I think a place is always more agreeable when all the people are out of it, and one has it to himself; for after all, --of course with exceptions of family and a few friends, --very few, --people are a burden; at least to me. Temperaments differ; the wife differs from me; women are generally different from men. She likes people; she likes the animation of a crowded street; and nothing bores her like the sweet silences of a noiseless Quarter of a town. Women are not contemplative; they live in things, and their nerves; and hence fill life with trifles, --fortunately for us men; for if it were not for my indefatigable comrade stirring me up all the time, I fancy I should relapse even into that Supreme Vacuity, in which, sitting, doth the Buddha dream of Nirvana. And apropos of Buddhism I am going to see if I can grasp its whole doctrine. I do not mean to embrace it, like the man from Salem. But if it were possible I should like to comprehend, --re se...