Our reverend friend at the “nursery” was going to have a letter written to you today, Miss Abby. And I agreed to come up and add an answer to the postscript with which you honored me, as I promised you. But circumstances have hindered my leaving home, and I must beg the liberty of using a separate paper. I feel as if I had returned to common air, after breathing in an atmosphere of exhilarating gas for a couple of weeks. Pray Miss Abby, do they breathe anything else at your house? However, I like Cheshire pretty well and I would rather be here just now, than anywhere else (saving your presence).

Recollect that this was the “icy Saturday” (any bones broke your way?) And I tell you, it pays for a good deal of previous self denial to enjoy its splendour as we do here. Look in what direction you will, the prospect is equally striking. For every blade of grass or sprig or ragged fern or old tangled briar bush—even the old stone wall and Virginny fence—as well as the stately trees or rugged mountain are equally encased with clear, silvery [201]ice. I wish you could have seen the woods when the sun’s rays were slanting across and through them. Such enchantment was never conceived in Arabian Nights. The scene this evening is so brilliant and I am admiring so much, that I am tempted to describe it to you. If I could impart to you but a slight share of the pleasure I receive from it, I should be delighted.

The effect of the ice on the evergreens is peculiarly rich. There are half a dozen young hemlocks, which I set out by the window here in the fall, and they do appear magnificent. Two of them (as I address you) have bowed their beautiful heads crown’d with fleecy light to the very ground. But where they stretch up out of the shade of the house, how splendidly their dark green feathery spray, waving and trembling with its load of twinkling brilliants, shivers and glistens in the clear bright moonlight—like the green tresses of a mermaid toss’d in the foam of a breaking wave.

And there’s another most exquisite tinge of green—the like of which you’ll only find in Fairy Land—in those sprouts and weeds struggling through the snow crust and ice which forms a dazzling mosaic pavement over the garden. How the sparkles from the drooping boughs of the willow where it sweeps the brook kindle up and reflect the dancing eyes of the ripples! And oh! Miss Abby, if you could but look up here at the moon through the thick little sprigs of the old maples, it is beyond description.

Well, I’ll stop. Who! (ough?) Pegasus! And apropos of coming down—that shoe—I had it in my pocket Monday morning when I called for Bill’s letter. But not seeing you, it escaped my mind and I have it here. I will send it up to you by the first opportunity, and if you will direct the other to me in “care of Mr. Charles Brace” and send it through Miss Mary, I shall be extremely obliged to you.

Did you “keep shady” with Mr. Harding? I am interested in the result of that affair. Remember that I am “the Knight of the shorn (scissored, alas!) lock.”

There’s hardly anything talked of here now but the great “tea-party” for the “benefit of the first Presbyterian meeting house in Cheshire,” which is to come off Valentine’s evening. As for the rest, you know they do talk in the country. They say that Miss Bradlee has jilted young Hitchcock, poor fellow. The new Academy teacher has been twice to the Presbyterian church and in the evening went home with—but that’s scandal. As also, if you care to know it, is the ridiculous yarn, which is going the rounds, that I am going to be married. I’ve no thoughts of it. Miss ______ but never mind what am I doing.

I set down to write an apology for not writing a postscript and to tell you how I “like Cheshire,” and I have been making a newspaper—for which I offer a thousand apologies. Will you do me the favour to sit down & write me a scolding—I forgot you said you never scold. Well, hardly anything would give me more pleasure than to receive under your hand and seal a [202]pardon for all the errors I have been guilty of this evening. But did you ever try to write a letter in a kitchen full of women and children “getting ready for Sunday?” You see what queer work it makes. But at all events you won’t have the same complaint to make of my letter that I did of your postscript.

With compliments to your sisters and with great respect, I remain