MARY.
Sophia writes to Elizabeth in Boston, in 1838, of her daily life, as follows:—
"I went to my hammock [in the studio] with Xenophon. Socrates was divinest, after Jesus Christ, I think. He lived up to his thought. . . . After dinner, Mary went out 'to take the fresh,' intending to finish the afternoon by a walk with Miss Hawthorne, and I commissioned her to bring home both her and her brother, if he should go, that I might give him my fragrant violets. . . .
"Miss Hawthorne came to walk, and remarked to Mary how beautiful the crocuses were which I had given to her brother. Mary told her that I sent them to her. 'That is a pretty story,' she replied. 'He never told me so.'
"Just after seven Mr. Hawthorne came. He looked very brilliant. . . . His coming here is one sure way of keeping you in mind, and it must be excessively tame for him after his experience of your society and conversation; so that, I think, you will shine the more by contrast."
One evening, she says, she "showed him Sarah Clarke's picture of the island, and that gorgeous flower in the Chinese book of which there is a mighty tree in Cuba. And then I turned over the pictures of those hideous birds, which diverted him exceedingly. One he thought deserved study. . . .
"I was to go to see his sister Elizabeth that afternoon, and he had heard about it. He asked if I could go, and said he should have waited for me to come if he had not supposed the east wind would prevent me. I said that it would. He wanted to know if I would come the next day. I meant to call Mary, but he prevented me by saying he could not stay long enough. . . . [He seldom stayed unless he found Sophia alone.]
"Last evening Mr. Hawthorne came for Mary to go with him to Miss
Burley's [to a club which met every week]. Mary could not go. It
seemed a shame to refuse him. I came down to catch a glimpse of him.
He has a celestial expression which I do not like to lose. . . .
"The children have just come in, and brought me a host of odorous violets. I made George a visit in the afternoon, in the midst of my battle with headache, and to my question of 'How dost?' he replied, for the first time, 'Pretty fair,' instead of the unvarying 'Middling.' Skeptics surely cannot disbelieve in one thing that is invisible, and that is Pain."
May, 1838.