Ever yours and Lady’s, E. F. G.

Woodbridge: March 1/69.

My dear Cowell,

. . . My Lugger Captain has just left me to go on his Mackerel Voyage to the Western Coast; and I don’t know when I shall see him again. Just after he went, a muffled bell from the Church here began to toll for somebody’s death: it sounded like a Bell under the sea. He sat listening to the Hymn played by the Church chimes last evening, and said he could hear it all as if in Lowestoft Church when he was a Boy, ‘Jesus our Deliverer!’ You can’t think what a grand, tender, Soul this is, lodged in a suitable carcase.

To Mrs. W. H. Thompson.

[1869.]

Dear Mrs. Thompson,

(I must get a new Pen for you—which doesn’t promise to act as well as the old one—Try another.)

Dear Mrs. Thompson—Mistress of Trinity—(this does better)—

I am both sorry, and glad, that you wrote me the Letter you have written to me: sorry, because I think it was an effort to you, disabled as you are; and glad, I need not say why.