She waked this
morning like another dawn, and smiled bountifully, and was borne off
to the penetralia of the house to see Madam Hawthorne and aunt
Elizabeth. My husband's muse is urging him now, and he is writing
again. He never looked so excellently beautiful. Una is to be dressed
as sumptuously as possible to-day, to visit her grandaunt Ruth
[Manning]. Louisa wants her to overcome with all kinds of beauty,
outward and inward. I feel just made. All are quite well here, and
enjoy the baby vastly.
To Hawthorne in Salem:--
BOSTON, December 19.
. . . If I asked myself strictly whether I could write to you this
evening, I should say absolutely no, for ten thousand different things
demand the precious moments while our baby sleeps. . . . I bless God for
such a destiny as mine; you satisfy me beyond all things. . . . Una is
now downstairs with her aunt Elizabeth, and she shines with perfection
of well-being. When she is near a chair, with both hands resting upon
it, she will suddenly let go, and for a few glorious seconds maintain
her equilibrium, and then down she sits upon the floor. C. Sturgis and
Anna Shaw have been to see her. I took her to William Story's
yesterday, and he thought her eyes very beautiful, and said he had
scarcely ever seen perfectly gray eyes before; and that such were the
finest eyes in the world, capable of the most expression. He added,
that her eyes were like those of an exquisite child of Raphael's,
which he had seen, in oils.
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