its gleaming summit clothed in everlasting ice and snow!  I have seen it several times, but it is always a new picture—­totally new—­you seem to see nothing the second time which you saw the first.  We took the opera glass, and examined its beauties minutely, for the naked eye cannot discern the little wayside flowers, and soft shadows and patches of sunshine, and half-hidden bunches of grass and jets of water which form some of its most enchanting features.  There is no slurring of perspective effect about it—­the most distant —­the minutest object in it has a marked and distinct personality—­so that you may count the very leaves on the trees.  When you first see the tame, ordinary-looking picture, your first impulse is to turn your back upon it, and say “Humbug”—­but your third visit will find your brain gasping and straining with futile efforts to take all the wonder in—­and appreciate it in its fulness—­and understand how such a miracle could have been conceived and executed by human brain and human hands.  You will never get tired of looking at the picture, but your reflections —­your efforts to grasp an intelligible Something—­you hardly know what —­will grow so painful that you will have to go away from the thing, in order to obtain relief.  You may find relief, but you cannot banish the picture—­It remains with you still.  It is in my mind now—­and the smallest feature could not be removed without my detecting it.  So much for the “Heart of the Andes.”

Ma was delighted with her trip, but she was disgusted with the girls for allowing me to embrace and kiss them—­and she was horrified at the Schottische as performed by Miss Castle and myself.  She was perfectly willing for me to dance until 12 o’clock at the imminent peril of my going to sleep on the after watch—­but then she would top off with a very inconsistent sermon on dancing in general; ending with a terrific broadside aimed at that heresy of heresies, the Schottische.

I took Ma and the girls in a carriage, round that portion of New Orleans where the finest gardens and residences are to be seen, and although it was a blazing hot dusty day, they seemed hugely delighted.  To use an expression which is commonly ignored in polite society, they were “hell-bent” on stealing some of the luscious-looking oranges from branches which overhung the fences, but I restrained them.  They were not aware before that shrubbery could be made to take any queer shape which a skilful gardener might choose to twist it into, so they found not only beauty but novelty in their visit.  We went out to Lake Pontchartrain in the cars. 
                                   Your Brother
                                             Sam Clemens