Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/329

Rh of masters. So, at least, I have been told by trustworthy persons.

22nd.—I dreamed last night so livingly of you, my darling Agatha, and was delighted to see how brisk and well you looked; we talked, in my dream, about Marstand, and you told me that mamma thought of accompanying you thither. Now that I am awake I wonder whether the dream was a soothsaying. Mamma is always accustomed to approve of your bathing and water-cure.

My life passes quietly, as quietly as the little river before my window; but it is well for me. I have not passed a calmer time since I have been in this country; for, with the exception of a few occasional visits in the forenoon from neighbours, I live quite alone with my good, old married pair. Every morning there is laid on the breakfast-table, beside my plate, a bouquet of deliciously fragrant flowers, generally of the Peruvian Olea fragrans, (and anything more delicious I do not know,) gathered by Mr. Poinsett. Every evening I sit with him and Mrs. Poinsett alone, read and talk with him, or tell stories for the good old lady, or give her riddles to guess, which very much amuses her. She sits by the fire and takes a nap, or listens to what Mr. Poinsett and I read by lamplight at the table. I wished to make him a little acquainted with my friends the transcendentalists and idealists of the north, and I have read to him portions of Emerson's Essays. But they shoot over the head of the old statesman; he says it is all “unpractical,” and he often criticises it unjustly, and we quarrel. Then the good old lady laughs by the fire, and nods to us, and is amazingly entertained. Mr. Poinsett is nevertheless struck with Emerson's brilliant aphorisms, and says that he will buy his works. It is remarkable how very little, or not at all, the authors of the Northern States, even the best of them, are known in the south. They are &emsp;