1850 LETTER TO HIS SISTER 89 



part of the difficulty and expense of getting anything to 

 people living inland ; as it is, I think I have done some 

 good in the matter ; their meaning was good but their 

 discretion small. But the obtuseness of English in general 

 about anything out of the immediate circle of their own 

 experience is something wonderful. 



I had heard here and there fractional accounts of your 

 doings from Eliza K. and my mother not of the most 

 cheery description and therefore I was right glad to get 

 your letter, which, though it tells of sorrow and mis- 

 fortune enough and to spare, yet shows me that the brave 

 woman's heart you always had, my dearest Lizzie, is still 

 yours, and that you have always had the warm love of 

 those immediately around you, and now, as the doctor's 

 letter tells us, you have one more source of joy and 

 happiness, and this new joy must efface the bitterness I 

 do not say the memory, knowing how impossible that 

 would be of your great loss. 1 God knows, my dear 

 sister, I could feel for you. It was as if I could see again 

 a shadow of the great sorrow that fell upon us all years 

 ago. 



Nothing can bind me more closely to your children 

 than I am already, but if the christening be not all over 

 you must let me be godfather ; and though I fear I am 

 too much of a heretic to promise to bring him up a good 

 son of the church yet should ever the position which 

 you prophesy, and of which I have an "Ahnung" 

 (though I don't tell that to anybody but Nettie), be mine, 

 he shall (if you will trust him to me) be cared for as few 

 sons are. As things stand, I am talking half nonsense, 

 but I mean it and you know of old, for good and for 

 evil, my tenacity of purpose. 



Now, as to my own affairs I am not married. 

 Prudently, at any rate, but whether wisely or foolishly I 

 am not quite sure yet, Nettie and I resolved to have 



1 The death of her little daughter Jessie. 



