P. S.—If it should be at all in your power, you would oblige me if you could verify the story of the dropping of notes, and who the person (if such an one there be) is.”
HERE IS OUR REPLY.
New York City, Nov. 12, 1849.
To the Rev. Dr. Potts: Dear Sir—Your approval of my course is truly grateful to my feelings. On my return to my abode on the day I saw you, my interrogations elicited the following which I forward as an answer to your request in your postscript, although I supposed I had sufficiently verified all I disclosed. Miss Mitchell says that she knows your daughter, when she sees her, and her mother and two nieces also know her by sight; that the Saturday previous (three days prior to my visit to you), she saw your daughter ascend the steps, ring the bell, request the servant (who is in collusion with Dressel and your daughter), to hand a note to Mr. Dressel, and depart as far as the corner of Sullivan and Houston streets, where she tarried until Mr. Dressel (leaving immediately on the receipt of the note in his room) overtook her, when they walked away together, arm in arm, and that similar scenes occurred while Mr. Dressel boarded with them in Bond street, last Winter, where the correspondence began, which has also been conducted through the Dispatch Post ever since, Mr. Dressel sometimes receiving as many as three letters per week; that a colored boy has sometimes brought the letters; that these letters (at least those Miss Mitchell perused, at Mr. Dressel’s request,) comprised six closely written pages, with the name of your daughter annexed, beginning with: “My dear, dear Otto:” and with “My dearest and very best friend,” &c.; that these letters bear the impress, on the seal, of “Happiness,” “Pain,” “Eye,” &c; that Mr. Dressel has your daughter’s daguerreotype, which has been open on the piano, in the parlor of Mrs. Mitchell, or on the piano or bed in Mr. Dressel’s apartment. Now, my dear Sir, if all this be fallacious, Miss Mitchell deserves a severe retribution. Time will show as to its truth. I am equally the friend of Mr. Dressel, and of the family of Mrs. Mitchell, and of your own family, all of whom are strangers to me in the light of consanguinity, and nearly by association, save as the boarder of Mrs. Mitchell now and hitherto. But if I can save your daughter from the dreadful calamity of elopement, and her parents from the deep mortification and anguish that would arise therefrom, I assure you that I will do so, come what may. The pride and glory of your family, and of a large circle of acquaintance and friends, shall not be suddenly and surreptitiously sacrificed forever, if I can avert it. So, my dear Sir, you can command my services as you please, in a rational way, in all this business. I repeat what I said at our interview, (in reply to your assertion of implicit confidence in your daughter,) that you must not lose sight of the frailties of our nature, with its unreliable and treacherous impulsions, nor of the power of genius, nor the extraordinary fascinations of music (in the hands of a great master), over the delicate, unsophisticated, and enthusiastic mind of a female, with kindred musical genius; and that even opposing natures often form alliances of friendship and matrimony.
From your friend,
Stephen H. Branch.
To Rev. Dr. George Potts.
N. B.—I trust you will excuse the haste with which this letter was written, owing to the arrival of friends from California, on yesterday.
S. H. B.