1827-1830] Jessie the Victim of her Feelings 221 



other competitors; and nothing pleased my little Emma s<? 

 much as losing the second prize which was so near being 

 judged in her favour. Perhaps they carried their scruples 

 further than necessary, but there was a delicacy in the f eeling 

 that I could not but feel pleased with. Miss Acland is gone, 

 very much to my satisfaction, but don't tell Harry I said so. 

 Flirting girls are dreadful bad company, and make every- 

 body that comes within their influence very bad company 

 also. . . . Jenny received a letter from Jessie last week, 

 in which she describes her sufferings at not having heard 

 from any of us in almost frantic terms; and it has put 

 me on the stool of repentance for my part of the neglect. 

 Her feelings turned upon not hearing from Harriet for 

 twenty days after the 1st of August, when she said she 

 was positively to begin her journey. Jessie was con- 

 vinced that she was either dead, or too ill to begin her 

 journey. I am really very sorry that our Jessie is so 

 much the victim of her feelings, and these feelings are 

 unreasonable, for if either of these two misfortunes had 

 happened she must have heard. She said that when the 

 first letter (after 7 weeks) came from Jenny, she tore it 

 all to pieces in her nervous efforts to open it; and for 

 some time she could not read it for tears. I take blame to 

 myself for having been so long in writing, but then I had no 

 conception but that she was hearing within the usual intervals 

 from some one or other of us. She now proposes that we 

 should all write at stated times, and she has allotted me the 

 15th, or from that to the 20th of each month, and I intend 

 to follow that suggestion and begin from this present 

 month. . . . 



Madame Sismondi to Elizabeth Wedgwood. 



CHNE, October 16 [1829]. 



You have probably seen in the newspapers what a loss 

 Geneva and we have had in the death of Dumont. 1 The 

 loss is irreparable and we are in despair. The body was 



1 See note, p. 169. 



