It stands in a commanding position on the artificial terrace of liberal dimensions, which is walled around with masonry.  From the walls the vineyards and olive groves of the estate slant away toward the valley....  Roses overflow the retaining walls and the battered and mossy stone urn on the gate-post, in pink and yellow cataracts, exactly as they do on the drop-curtains in the theaters.  The house is a very fortress for strength.”

     The Mrs. Ross in this letter was Janet Ross, daughter of Lady Duff
     Gordon, remembered to-day for her Egyptian letters.  The Ross castle
     was but a little distance away.

To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira: 

         &nb
sp;                         VillaViviani, Settignano, Florence. 
                                                  Sept. 30, 1892
Dear sue,—­We have been in the house several days, and certainly it is a beautiful place,—­particularly at this moment, when the skies are a deep leaden color, the domes of Florence dim in the drizzling rain, and occasional perpendicular coils of lightning quivering intensely in the black sky about Galileo’s Tower.  It is a charming panorama, and the most conspicuous towers and domes down in the city look to-day just as they looked when Boccaccio and Dante used to contemplate them from this hillock five and six hundred years ago.

The Mademoiselle is a great help to Livy in the housekeeping, and is a cheery and cheerful presence in the house.  The butler is equipped with a little French, and it is this fact that enables the house to go—­but it won’t go well until the family get some sort of facility with the Italian tongue, for the cook, the woman-of-all-work and the coachman understand only that.  It is a stubborn and devilish language to learn, but Jean and the others will master it.  Livy’s German Nauheim girl is the worst off of anybody, as there is no market for her tongue at all among the help.

With the furniture in and the curtains up the house is very pretty, and not unhomelike.  At mid-night last night we heard screams up stairs—­Susy had set the lofty window curtains afire with a candle.  This sounds kind of frightful, whereas when you come to think of it, a burning curtain or pile of furniture hasn’t any element of danger about it in this fortress.  There isn’t any conceivable way to burn this house down, or enable a conflagration on one floor to climb to the next.

Mrs. Ross laid in our wood, wine and servants for us, and they are excellent.  She had the house scoured from Cellar to rook the curtains washed and put up, all beds pulled to pieces, beaten, washed and put together again, and beguiled the Marchese into putting a big porcelain stove in the vast central hall.  She is a wonderful woman, and we don’t quite see how or when we should have gotten under way without her.

Observe our address above—­the post delivers letters daily at the house.