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  Dear Mr. Whitman—

I was very, very glad to get thy postal card & thy congratulations on the birth of our second little daughter, who is two months old today. We have just brought her back from the country, where we all had a most delightful Easter holiday. How thee would have enjoyed our drives! The fields & lanes were starred with primroses & daffodils, &  the hedges were just breaking into bloom. The air was fragrant & warm & the birds seemed intoxicated with joy at the return of Spring. The English country is so beautiful—it is different, too, from anything we can see at home. There is a mellow historical air brooding over everything—the old common lands, dating from Saxon times—which are beautiful even if they are not useful in an agricultural sense—the quaint old rambling villages with mossy thatched roofs, clustering  about the gates of some lordly park, of whose castle or gabled Manor House one can catch glimpses through the magnificent trees—I do not say I approve of grand castles & dependent villages—or even of so much waste land. But I enjoy it even more than an Englishman could, I think, since I don't feel responsible for its existence.

We have come back again to work, political, legal, & social—& of these three the hardest is the social. I grow  more disinclined every year for the kind of amusement which society here offers—which is not amusement at all, but a struggle for notoriety.

Little Ray has entered the enchanted land of imagination. She lives in "'tories" & "p'etends" & we are in terror of our lives from her deadly assaults as a "bear-lion." She usually eats her supper in the character of an "efelant" with a "long nose" & a "big mouff," & when she wakes up in the night I sometimes find her transformed  into a loudly purring "pussy-cat" or a wriggling "'nake." Her little sister is still in the mental attitude of an oyster—except that on occasion she can do what I believe no animal ever did—laugh. But that is not quite true—I can remember one animal who used to laugh—Antecellere—the horse I had so many years. He used to laugh when I fell off—sometimes he laughed so hard that he would forget to run away.

 

There is an English friend of mothers' who has long been a disciple of thine. She is going to America soon & is so very anxious to see thee that I ventured to give her a letter to thee. But I told her of thy ill-health & warned her that thee might not be well enough to see her—so thee will not feel in​ it​ necessary at all, if thee doesn't feel like seeing her when she comes.

I am just preparing a  speech on "Sugar Bounties"—which I am to give soon at The Annual Meeting of the Women's Liberal Federation. It is one of the burning questions of the day, & is really the old contest between Free Trade & Protection, under a new form. I am on the Free Trade side, in spite of my American upbringing.

I must close to get this in today's post. With love & always with sincerest wishes for thy health, I am,

Thy friend Mary Whitall Costelloe