Charles E. Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe compiled from her letters and journals by her son Charles Edward Stowe

[471] somehow gone astray, because I know, of course, you would write. Yesterday we were both out of our senses with mingled pity and indignation at that dreadful stick of a Casaubon,--and think of poor Dorothea dashing like a warm, sunny wave against so cold and repulsive a rock! He is a little too dreadful for anything: there does not seem to be a drop of warm blood in him, and so, as it is his misfortune and not his fault, to be cold-blooded, one must not get angry with him. It is the scene in the garden, after the interview with the doctor, that rests on our mind at this present. There was such a man as he over in Boston, high in literary circles, but I fancy his wife was n't like Dorothea, and a vastly proper time they had of it, treating each other with mutual reverence, like two Chinese mandarins.

My love, what I miss in this story is just what we would have if you would come to our tumble-down, jolly, improper, but joyous country,--namely, “jollitude.” You write and live on so high a plane! It is all self-abnegation. We want to get you over here, and into this house, where, with closed doors, we sometimes make the rafters ring with fun, and say anything and everything, no matter what, and won't be any properer than we's a mind to be. I am wishing every day you could see our America,--travel, as I have been doing, from one bright, thriving, pretty, flowery town to another, and see so much wealth, ease, progress, culture, and all sorts of nice things. This dovecot where I now am is the sweetest little nest imaginable; fronting on a city street, with back windows opening on a sea view, with still, quiet rooms filled with books, pictures,