So ended one of the most interesting and arduous experiences of her life. She always held in affectionate remembrance the city where she had enjoyed and suffered so much, and the friends she made there.
To Laura
Oak Glen, November 4, 1885.
You little hateful thing!
Herewith returned is the letter you wrote for. I had a mind to send it to you, beast that you are, without one word, just to pay you for that postal. Of course, I meant to write you immediately afterward in a separate envelope, telling you that I still love you. But there! I reflected that you could have a bad feeling if you opened the envelope and found no greeting from me. For the sake of posterity, Madam, I declined to give you this bad feeling. I do also retain some proprietorship in a certain pair of eyes which are like Sapphira's. Oh! I mean sapphires, and I don't want to dim them with any tear diamonds. "You flatter yourself," replies the Good-Natured One,[96] "to think of my shedding tears about anything that you could say or do, or leave unsaid or undone." Just so. All right. I have got beefsteak for dinner to-day. What do you think of the weather, and does your husband know when your blacking is out?
Now, my sweet darling, your old Mammy is just back from a tremendous jaunt. I had a beautiful time in Iowa, and am as well as possible. Only think, travelling and at work for one calendar month, and not a finger ache, 'cept one day, when I had a slight headache. And I brought home over $200 earned by lectures....
To the same
The Berkeley Nuisance,[97] New York,
December 26, 1885.... What have I been doing for the last eight weeks? Never you mind, my little dear. Mostly putting a girdle round the earth by correspondence, and some-ly worrying about my poor relations. Don't you flatter yourself that I ever thought of you under this head. But the ——, and the ——, and the ——, taken together, are enough to give one a turn at the worry-cat system. Well 'm, I had also to see the distribution of the whole edition of my New Orleans Report, and I can only compare this to the process of taking down a house, and of sending each individual brick somewhere, labelled with your compliments; supposing the bricks to be one thousand in number, it would take some time to distribute them, Harry Richards will be able to tell you how much time, and how many masculine oaths would go to each hundred of the articles. Well, that's enough about that. You have had one of my bricks sent you, and hang me if I believe you have read it. Sweetison (a new little 'spression which I have this minute invented), I stayed at Oak Glen until Monday last, which was the 21st. Then I came here by the way of Boston, and arrove on Tuesday evening. Our quarters, or rather eighths, are small, considering my papers and Maud's clothes. The food is fine, the style first-rate, the rigs imposing to a degree, but, ah! I kind of hate it all. New York is too frightfully dirty! and then so stereotyped and commonplace. Boston losing its prestige? Not as I am at present advised....