I shall in that case consider it as for the best. Merely one word from you and mamma, and —— I hasten home to you!
LETTER XV.
My beloved Mamma,—It grieves me much to know that you and Agatha have had a more than usually trying winter. Thank God, however, that it is now past, and that the sunny side of the year is come with its more cheerful prospects. The baths of Marstand will do Agatha good; but we shall never see our poor little friend strong! With regard to the wish which I have now expressed to Agatha, I can merely here repeat that it will not be difficult; and that I am ready to yield it to another from my beloved ones at home.
How well and happy I am among the kind people in this hospitable country, which has become to me like a vast home, mamma has already seen in my letters. I go from home to home in America, and am everywhere received and treated like a child of the house. Besides the excellent effect of this, as regards the health both of soul and body, it affords me an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the domestic life and the homes of the New World—with the innermost life of this hemisphere, in a manner which scarcely any other traveller ever enjoyed, and which is of the highest consequence to me, because it is precisely that which I wished to become familiar with here. But I had scarcely any idea of the degree in which the kindness and the hospitality of this people would respond to this wish. Each family, if it is in anything like easy circumstances, inhabits an entire house; and has besides, generally, a little garden, or at all events a grass plot. The house has one or two parlours
