Charleston, November 19, 1803.
All your trouble, good precepts, and better example have been thrown away on me. I am still a child. Your letter of the 7th inst. reached me yesterday. Of course it made me very happy; but those pretty little playthings from D. M'Kinnon delighted me. I looked at them over and over, with as much pleasure as a miser over his hoard. But you must send me the shawl. I shall be down at the races, and want to have the gratification of displaying it.
From my date and my last letter you imagine that Natalie is in town, but you are mistaken. I came down in the hope of meeting her, and to buy some furniture for the Oaks. Mari on business. I return to Waccamaw to-morrow morning early. My husband left me to-day for Columbia. He received your letter too late to answer it hence, but will do so from Columbia. As for me, I am in the height of bustle and confusion. Before seven this morning I had packed up two or three trunks, and unpacked them all again. Is not that industry? I write as if I were in a hurry. You may perceive the state of my head and house from the style of my letter. More from Hagley. Good-by.
THEODOSIA.
TO THEODOSIA.
Washington, December 6, 1803.
Since closing a letter to you last evening, I have received two more, 8th and 19th of November. You are a good girl to write so often. Oh, yes! I knew how much of a child you were when I sent the pretty things. Just such another child is son pere.
I write from my breakfast-table, having not yet been abroad, and having denied myself to everybody. I have, therefore, nothing now to say, and should not so soon have troubled you again, but for that part of your letter which speaks of the condition of your house. I hasten to say that, in my opinion, your house will not be a fit or healthy residence for your boy before the middle of April or 1st of May. The walls may, to the touch, appear dry in three or four weeks; but shut up any room for twelve or twenty-four hours, and enter before it be aired, you will meet an offensive, and, as I believe, a pernicious effluvia; an air totally unfit for respiration, unelastic, and which, when inhaled, leaves the lungs unsatisfied. This is the air you will breathe if you inhabit the house. I could, perhaps, show chymically how the atmosphere of the closed rooms becomes thus azotic, but I prefer to submit to the test of your senses.
The shawl shall be ordered on, since you will risk it. Yes, go to the races, and appear to be amused. Be more social.