Your affectionate sister,
MARY.
Sophia writes to Elizabeth in Boston, in 1838, of her daily life, as
follows:--
"I went to my hammock [in the studio] with Xenophon. Socrates was
divinest, after Jesus Christ, I think. He lived up to his thought. . . .
After dinner, Mary went out 'to take the fresh,' intending to
finish the afternoon by a walk with Miss Hawthorne, and I commissioned
her to bring home both her and her brother, if he should go, that I
might give him my fragrant violets. . . .
"Miss Hawthorne came to walk, and remarked to Mary how beautiful the
crocuses were which I had given to her brother. Mary told her that I
sent them _to her_. 'That is a pretty story,' she replied. 'He never
told me so.'
"Just after seven Mr. Hawthorne came. He looked very brilliant. . . .
His coming here is one sure way of keeping you in mind, and it must be
excessively tame for him after his experience of your society and
conversation; so that, I think, you will shine the more by contrast."
One evening, she says, she "showed him Sarah Clarke's picture of the
island, and that gorgeous flower in the Chinese book of which there is
a mighty tree in Cuba. And then I turned over the pictures of those
hideous birds, which diverted him exceedingly. One he thought deserved
study. . . .
"I was to go to see his sister Elizabeth that afternoon, and he had
heard about it. He asked if I could go, and said he should have waited
for me to come if he had not supposed the east wind would prevent me.
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