Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches

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[343] letters to her former pastor in New York, requesting information on points of faith. Not one of these letters was ever answered, and it is incredible to suppose that they would not have been if he had received them. It is highly probable that they never left Rome. I have myself been warned to attach my stamps to letters firmly, so that they may not be stolen in passing through the Post-office. Postage here is also double what it is in Florence.

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Feb. 12, 1869.

I have been looking for some time to find a good picture of Marcus Aurelius, and have generally become known among Roman photographers as the man who wants the Marc Aureli. This morning I had just left my room when I discovered Rev. Samuel Longfellow in a photograph shop in the Via Frattina. “I was just coming to see you,” he said; “and I stopped here to look for a photograph of Marcus Aurelius.” He laughed when I told him that I had been on the same quest, and suggested that we should walk to the Capitol together and look at the statue and bust of our favorite emperor. “I think he was the greatest of the Romans,” said Mr. Longfellow, “if not the noblest of all the ancients.”

So we walked together — as we never shall again-through the long Corso with its array of palaces, past the column of Aurelius and the fragments of Trajan's forum, until we reached