Dear Susanna [so the letter read],—There's a new man in your house at Farnham. His name is John Hathaway, but he's made all over and it was high time. I say it's the hand of God! He won't own up that it is, but I'm letting him alone, for I've done quarreling, though I don't like to see a man get religion and deny it, for all the world like Peter in the New Testament. If you haven't used up the last one of your seventy-times-sevens, I think you'd better come back and forgive your husband. If you don't, you'd better send for your son. I'm willing to bear the burdens the Lord intends specially for me, but Jack belongs to you, and a good-sized heavy burden he is, too, for his age. I can't deny that, if he is a Hathaway. I think he's the kind of a boy that ought to be put in a barrel and fed through the bung-hole till he grows up; but of course I'm not used to children's ways.
Be as easy with John at first as you can. I know you'll say I never was with my husband, but he was different. He got to like a bracing treatment, Adlai did. Many's the time he said to me, "Louisa, when you make up our minds, I'm always contented." But John isn't made that way. He's a changed man; now, what we've got to do is to keep him changed. He doesn't bear you any grudge for leaving him, so he won't reproach you.
Hoping to see you before long, I am,
Yours as usual,
Louisa Banks.