Yours with love and regards
Mrs. Mattie T. Bangs.
P. S. I send Bose Ethel’s tintype took when she was fourtine she wears her hair up now.
LETTER NO. II.
New York, N. Y., —— Street.
Dear Miss Brewster:
Permit me at this moment of your joy and unprecedented good fortune to present to you my most heartfelt congratulations.
Perhaps you may not recollect my humble self, as you always impressed me with such a sense of awe and dignity that I dared not venture to disclose to you the profound admiration which I have always felt for your exalted character.
Rarely have I known such a nature as yours. One so endowed with all the charms and graces of a goddess and a saint it has never been my fortune to meet. Do not think I am flattering you, mon ange; but ever since the first moment when my eyes fell on your face suffused with dewy tears, as you bade good-by to your native land, you have been the ideal of my fondest dreams.
I sailed with you on the steamer, like you bound for those shores of mystery and delight which from childhood’s hour had haunted my imagination, now hélas! never to be revisited, for I—how can I say it?—have been doomed by fate to lose all that is most dear to me.