Dear Daughter,
I hope you will not consider me an intruder for stopping a moment in your "poet's corner" to admire the neatness of your desk, the sweetness of your poetry, the beauty of the prospect from your window. Cherish this love of nature, dear, enjoy all it gives you, for God made these helps to charm contemplation, and they strengthen the noble desire to be or to do all that is sent for our training & our good. Heaven be about you my child, is mother's Sunday prayer.
Louisa Alcott filled her diary with letters from her mother, occasionally adding in later life annotations of her own. This letter from her mother when Louisa was eleven is an example:
(From Louisa Alcott's Diary.)
Concord, 1843.
Dear Louy,
I enclose a picture for you which I always liked very much, for I have imagined that you might be just such an industrious daughter & I such a feeble but loving mother, looking to your labor for my daily bread. Keep it for my sake, & your own, for you and I always like to be grouped together.
Mother.
