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2 Wiener Strasse,
Dresden, Feb.18, 1872.

I see that your 80th birthday found you well and busy as usual. I am catching up with you: 52 from 80 leave only 28.

I suppose we shall go back to Italy, probably, to Florence to winter. If Emily recovers, it will be a slow process, and her health and strength will be much less tried and taxed in Florence than in Germany. Educational advantages and facilities are less there than here for John, but if he acquires all the information there which can be acquired he will be sufficiently learned for all useful, or necessary purposes. 

Mary bears the fatigue and anxiety of watching wonderfully well. She possesses the valuable, inestimable advantage of being a good, sound and easy sleeper: the moment she lays her head on her pillow to sleep, asleep she falls, and continues sleeping until she be wanted. I am not so highly favored, which is a misfortune.

John is well, and so is the baby, who ranges through the house talking German to herself and to all others as though it were her Mother-tongue, and it sounds very soft and musical as it drops from her childish lips. Indeed the German well, properly, spoken by a cultivated person with a reasonably soft voice is not so harsh a language as most people fancy, and when sung is not very inferior to the Italian in sweetness.

We all send much love to the brothers and sisters and to yourself. I shall write soon to somebody, and I hope that I shall be able to send good accounts of Em.

Always your loving 
F.W.S.