"Dorchester County, Md., October—, 1829.
"Darling Niece,—Idol of my heart, let me begin by entreating you to take a conservative course when I break the sad intelligence to you of the death of my dear sister, Lucy, at Cambridge, yesterday, of the heart disease. She was the star of the house of McLane. She is gone. 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord, and I shall take a conservative though consistent course on the parties who have inflicted this injury upon you, my dear niece, and upon your calm and collected, if stricken, uncle.
"'The Lord moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform,' and his humble instruments require only to be inflexible and conservative to do all things well. Be assured that righteousness shall be done upon the adversaries of our family, and that right speedily. My own grief is composed in the satisfaction I shall take, and the assurance that your sainted mother is where the wicked cease from troubling.
"The financial arrangements of my dear sister were of the most conservative and high-toned character, as was to have been expected of her.
"You may be desirous, my outraged, but, I hope, still spirited, idol, to hear the particulars of Lucy's death. She did not reach Cambridge till near midnight, having made the long journey from Princess Anne without fitting companions, and, in the excited state of her feelings, after she left Vienna in the evening, a depression of the spirits, accompanied by a fluttering of the heart, came on, and rapidly increased, and, by the time she arrived at our relatives', she was nearly dead with nervous apprehension and weakness. On seeing me, she revived sufficiently to make her will in the most sisterly and conservative manner.
"A physician was procured, but he pronounced her system so debilitated and detoned as hardly probable to outride the shock, the nervous centres being depressed and atrophy setting in.
"She talked incessantly about the Entailed Hat, and said it was a permanent shadow and weight upon your heart, and made me promise to mash it, if it could conservatively be done.
"I read to my dear sister from the Book of Books, and tried to compose her feelings, but she broke out ever and anon, 'Oh, Brother Allan! to think I have raised children to be bought and sold, and married to foresters and trash.' She was deeply sensitive as to what would be said about it in Baltimore.
"Just before she died, she said, 'Do not bury me at Princess Anne, where that fiend can come near me with his frightful Hat! Take me to Baltimore, where there are no bog-ores, nor old family chattels, to disturb the respectability of death. Apologize for my daughter, and do her justice.'
"And so this grand woman died, in the confidence of a blessed immortality, leaving us to vindicate her motives and continue her conservative course, and to meet at her funeral next Friday, at our church in Baltimore, where Rev. John Breckenridge will preach the funeral sermon over this murdered saint.