Heidelberg
20 March 1886
MY DEAR PARENTS BROTHERS,
Winter is over and this is now spring. Here the changes of the season are greatly appreciated for a great contrast is noted in the change. After the cold of a severe winter, after so much ice and so much snow and so much fog, in two or three days, the sky turns blue, the air becomes warm, snow and ice melt. Men lay aside their wraps and overcoats and the women put on lighter dresses of various colors. The change of seasons is more notable in Germany than in Madrid. Now my windows are open; I hear and see the children playing noisily in the square whose trees are beginning to sprout again. This so beautiful that one feels like singing.
Everybody tells me that I have made very rapid and surprising progress in the German language. Now I already speak it and the Germans understand me; that is, high German or hochdeutsch, for I don’t speak or study the dialect spoken in this city or the Heidelberger Deutsch, being a dialect and neither a scientific nor literary language. I hope that before the end of the eight months I have fixed, I shall be able to leave Germany and go to England, or wherever you think convenient.
I still have money to live on for 27 days and to pay for the house rent. If by chance I don’t receive money until May, Luna has spontaneously offered to send me money any time I may [need] it as he has some, for being a good painter, half [the] year he is poor and the other half he seems like a millionaire.[1]
Were it not for the fact that I have to order underwear— what I have was the one I brought from Manila mended and re-mended—my allowance could be further reduced, but now it is not possible for me, for although food here is not expensive, the…
[The rest of the letter is missing]
04-151 [Misc.]
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