Yours, very affectionately,
***** ****
N.B. Please to send me word the day of the month, and what’s o’clock.
Can you, Mr. Editor, imagine any thing more expressive of loneliness,
and desire for intelligence, than this young wife’s capital N.B., with
the execratory citation from her husband’s vocabulary--or more
sportively affectionate than the “twist up” of her kiss, with “Bob”
Lobski asleep on her lap. I like a letter, and a letter writer of this
sort mightily: one with a fearless and strong expression of feeling--as
in the epithet about the dull evenings, which a female can scarcely
extenuate, except by such a confession and assignment to its right
owner, implying its impropriety, as this female makes. How oddly, and
yet how well, her fondness for reading and her domestic management
collocate--the Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV. and the price of
provisions. How natural is her momentary hesitation between mud-rubbing
and bathing. Then the instant determination, so essential when there is
no time to spare, marks such “decision of character!”--even the author
of the excellent essay on that noble quality would admire it. I presume
that “Lobski” may be rickety; and I take this opportunity of observing,
on the authority of a medical friend, that town-bred children, who eat
profusely of sugar, and are pampered with sweets, usually are. Sugar has
the effect of softening the bones, and causes the rickets: it should
form no part of the food of rickety children, or only in a small degree;
and such children should be allowed and encouraged to eat common salt
freely.
To return however to the letter.--I should really like to know the
secret of the allusion respecting the “parson” and the “sailor,” so
naturally called forth by the playful services of the tars; which, I
have observed, are ever exerted on such occasions, and remind one of the
labours of Hercules with the distaff. Her account of Lobski’s “animated
nature” is so pretty and true a sketch of boyish infancy, that you may
perceive the hand of the _mother_ in every line. In the anticipation of
the mayoralty show and the fair, and the unsociableness of Gravesend
society, I think I can trace something of the _woman_. I hope she may
live to see her boys “good men and true,” gladdening her heart by
fearless well-doing. She must look well to Lobski:--he’s a “Pickle.” It
is in the power of a mother to effect more in the formation of a child’s
early disposition than the father.
Lastly, that you may be assured of the genuineness of the letter I
found, and have copied, the _original_ accompanies this communication to
your publishers; with authority, if its ownership be claimed, to deliver
it to the claimant, on the production of a line in the handwriting of
the epistle itself.