The note you forwarded me from Liverpool was another scream from that mad manageress about Macbeth. I wonder if her whole life is passed in such agonies; I think it must be worse than the greatest bodily pain.
Only think, my dear, on arriving here, and inquiring for Hayes, I recollected that I had sent her to Bath and not to Bristol! "Consekens is," as Mr. Sam Weller says (but alas for you! you don't know Pickwick), that I have had to send off a porter from this house to Bath, per railway, to reclaim my erring maid, and fetch her hither; and, being Sunday, fewer trains go between the two places than usual, and she cannot get here till near four o'clock this afternoon, until which time I dare not trust myself to think of the state of mind of the abandoned (in the perfectly honest sense of the word) Bridget or Biddy Hayes; indeed, I shall not get her here till six this evening, and I only hope that I may then.
What a moon there was last night! and how it made me think of you, as it shone into the dark lofty room at Birmingham, where I sat playing and singing very sadly all by myself! The sea must have been as smooth as glass, and you cannot have been sick, even with your best endeavor.
The road from Birmingham here is quite pretty; the country in a most exquisite state of leaf and blossom; the crops look extremely well along this route; and the little cottage gardens, which delight my heart with their tidy cheerfulness, are so many nosegays of laburnum, honeysuckle, and lilac.
The stokers on all the engines that I saw or met this morning had adorned their huge iron dragons with great bunches of hawthorn and laburnum, which hung their poor blossoms close to the hissing hot breath of the boilers, and looked wretched enough. But this dressing up the engines, as formerly the stage-coach horses used to be decked with bunches of flowers at their ears on Mayday, was touching.
I suppose the railroad men get fond of their particular engine, though they can't pat and stroke it, as sailors do of their ship. Speculate upon that form of human love. I take it [there] is nothing which, being the object of a man's occupation, may not be made also that of his affection, pride, and solicitude, too. Were we—people in general, I mean—Christians, forms of government would be matters of quite secondary importance; in fact, of mere expediency. A republic, such as the American, being the slightest possible form of government, seems to me the best adapted to an enlightened, civilized Christian community, a community who deserve that name; and, you know, the theory of making people what they should be is to treat them better than they deserve—an axiom that holds good in all moral questions, of which political government should be one.
This hotel is charming, clean, comfortable, cheerful, very nice.
Farewell. Give my kind regards to your people, and believe me
Ever yours,
Fanny.