To Mrs. Nathaniel Silsbee.
West Newton [Mass.], September 14, 1850.
The morning after you left, when I opened the front door I found a box against it which proved to be the box. My dear lady, you are too overpowering in your goodness!
It made me cry to see how you loaded me with benefits.
But I pray you curb your generosity a little.
I love you for your own sake, and if in some unlucky hour my conscience whispers to my heart that I ought to love you because you are so good to me, then it will be hot work, for my savage love of freedom will resist the claim like a tiger.
So pray don't bring me into such a dilemma.
The pitcher is a superb affair.
Antique and classical to my heart's content.
I seem to be very anti-temperance in my surroundings.
The pitcher is tipsy, my beautiful young Cupidon has his heart merry with wine, the head of my sacrificial bull is crowned with grapes, and my candlesticks are interwoven grapevines.
Luckily, I have no weakness of that sort.
If myrtle wreaths abounded everywhere, I might feel a little conscious.
You say the candlesticks are associated with pleasant times in New York, which we shall never have again.
How do you know that, lady fair?
I have been saddened by such a thought sometimes, but there gleamed across the shadow a bright idea that perhaps some day you and I would set off to New York a-pleasuring, afoot and alone.
I could stay quietly at Friend Hopper's while you flirted among the fashionables, and when you had leisure,
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we could go and sit together on carpet bales, or eat ginger-snaps on a door-step in Staten Island.
What does the Lady Mayoress of Salem think of that dignified suggestion? 