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Venise [[Venice]] Jan. 9. | 85.

My dearest Emmie,

I hardly know where to begin I have so much to tell about this place. 

We are at a first rate hotel on the Grand canal and also have a room that we use for a studio in the same house. 

There were three Americans here, a gentleman from Lowell and a lady and her daughter from Albany. The ladies were very jolly and we had some very good fun with them. The mother mended some gloves for us. We are cultivating our nerve. I dont think Graves needs any but he says he can brush it up a little so he tackles every one that speaks English. He asked the lady if she did'nt want to fix some gloves for him and of course she could'nt say no. Her Daughter had almost as much cheek as bother[[brother ?]] G.

We all went over to the Armenian Monestary the other aft. It is about 

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two miles from V. [[?]] the harbour. It is the place [[strikethrough]] tha [[/strikethrough]] where Lord Byron used to live when he was in V. They have lots of [[?]] of him or rather mementos, his table and a lots of other things including his autograph in both English and armenian. Then they have the autographs of Napoleun Buonaparte, Prince of Wales and family, and heaps of other celebrities. An old monk with a double breasted tack showed us about about and expatiated on the various things in french. He took us into the printing room where they were printing scientific works in Armenian. The monks at the monestery make it a business to translate all the modern scientific works of every language into armenian. 

I am sorry to say our American friends left today at 12 j.x.[[January 10th ?]]. 

This is the lovliest place I was ever in, you see pictures where ever you look. The only trouble is that you dont know where to paint first. We have the 

Transcription Notes:
I left most of the apparent misspellings as they appeared in the letter without my indicating corrections. I thought that Tarbell's meaning was clear, and so I left the text alone unless it seemed confusing. Perhaps the reviewer may think that some corrections are necessary.