‘I thank you lovingly, dearest Leila, for your letter. I prize your affection,—you write to me almost as my own darling used to write. If my health had broken down, so that I could not have been a comfort to dear Grandmamma and Aunt Fanny here, I should thankfully have accepted the invitation which you so affectionately press; but as I keep pretty well, I do not think that it would be well for me to leave my post at home. Dear Grandmamma seems to cling to me so,—she is so loving! I am thankful that she keeps so well. Dear Aunt Fanny was not so well for two days, but is better again....
‘My darling once wrote and asked me whose character I would like her to try to copy as a pattern. I gave her your sweet Mother’s. She replied that it would be difficult, but that it was well to aim high. I think that you will like to know this. You have the same sweet model always before you; you, dear one, have advantages that my darling had not.
‘Though I have cried over this note, it has soothed me to write it; I have felt as if I were taking another dear young niece to my heart,—a sad heart, but I trust not an ungrateful one for the earthly affection which is God’s gift, and of which I have been granted much.—Your affectionate Aunt and Godmother
‘C. M. T.’
TO MRS. HAMILTON.
‘1866.
‘I send you on the other page a few lines which came into my mind yesterday in regard to my sweet Letitia:—
‘A Thought.
‘She travelled to the glorious East; she met the rising sun,—
And even so her day of heavenly bliss was soon begun;