You will come
and see me, I am sure. I am especially commissioned by Mr. Emerson to
request my dear and honorable brother, Mr. Mann, to come to Concord to
lecture at the Lyceum as soon as he possibly can. He says that Mr.
Hoar told him he had never heard such eloquence from human lips as
from Mr. Mann's. "Therefore," says he, "this is the place of all
others for him to come and lecture." Tell me beforehand whether your
husband eats anything in particular, that I may have it all ready for
him. I am in the greatest hurry that mortal has been in since Absalom
ran from his pursuers. Your own
SOPHIECHEN.
The record for Sophia's mother goes on unfailingly:--
November 19.
My DEAREST MOTHER,--This Indian summer is very beautiful. The dulcet
air and stillness are lovely. This morning we watched the opal dawn,
and the stars becoming pale before it, as also the old moon, which
rose between five and six o'clock, and, in the form of a boat of pure
silvery-gold, floated up the sea of clear, rosy air. I am so very
early a riser that the first faint light usually finds me busy.
I wish you could see how charmingly my husband's Study looks now. As
we abandon our drawing-room this winter, I have hung on his walls the
two Lake Como and the Loch Lomond pictures, all of which I painted
expressly for him; and the little mahogany centre-table stands under
the astral lamp, covered with a crimson cloth. The antique
centre-table broke down one day beneath my dear husband's arms, with a
mighty sound, astonishing me in my studio below the Study.
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