The following letter refers to Sophia's sister Mary, who had become
Mrs. Horace Mann:—
DEAREST MARY,—I do not know whether you were ever aware of the peculiar love I have felt from childhood for my precious sister, who is now so blest. It has always been enthusiastic and profound. Her still and perfect disinterestedness, her noiseless self-devotion, her transparent truthfulness and all-comprehensive benevolence through life! No words can ever express what a spear in my side it has been to see her year after year toiling for all but herself, and growing thin and pale with too much effort. Not that ever her heroic heart uttered a word of complaint or depreciation. But so much the more did I feel for her. I saw her lose her enchanting gayety, and become grave and sad, yet could do nothing to restore her spirits. I was hardly aware, until it was removed, how weighty had been the burden of her unfulfilled life upon my heart. At her engagement, all my wings were unfolded, and my body was light as air.
Mrs. Mann had been to Europe for her wedding-tour, and was thus welcomed home:—
November 7.
BELOVED MARY,—Yesterday noon my dear husband came home from the village but a few seconds—it seemed even to me—after he left me, shining with glad tidings. They were, that the steamer had arrived with you in it! Imagine my joy, for I cannot tell it. You will come and see me, I am sure. I am especially commissioned by Mr. Emerson to request my dear and honorable brother, Mr. Mann, to come to Concord to lecture at the Lyceum as soon as he possibly can. He says that Mr. Hoar told him he had never heard such eloquence from human lips as from Mr. Mann's. "Therefore," says he, "this is the place of all others for him to come and lecture." Tell me beforehand whether your husband eats anything in particular, that I may have it all ready for him. I am in the greatest hurry that mortal has been in since Absalom ran from his pursuers. Your own
SOPHIECHEN.
The record for Sophia's mother goes on unfailingly:—
November 19.
My DEAREST MOTHER,—This Indian summer is very beautiful. The dulcet air and stillness are lovely. This morning we watched the opal dawn, and the stars becoming pale before it, as also the old moon, which rose between five and six o'clock, and, in the form of a boat of pure silvery-gold, floated up the sea of clear, rosy air. I am so very early a riser that the first faint light usually finds me busy.
I wish you could see how charmingly my husband's Study looks now. As we abandon our drawing-room this winter, I have hung on his walls the two Lake Como and the Loch Lomond pictures, all of which I painted expressly for him; and the little mahogany centre-table stands under the astral lamp, covered with a crimson cloth. The antique centre-table broke down one day beneath my dear husband's arms, with a mighty sound, astonishing me in my studio below the Study. He has mended it. On one of the secretaries stands the lovely Ceres, and opposite it Margaret Fuller's bronze vase. In the afternoon, when the sun fills the room and lights up the pictures, it is beautiful. Yet still more, perhaps, in the evening, when the astral enacts the sun, and pours shine upon all the objects, and shows, beneath, the noblest head in Christendom, in the ancient chair with its sculptured back