Publisher's Synopsis
My dear mother-I have kept you posted as far as Tuesday week last, and, although my letter willnot have reached you yet, I will begin another before my news accumulates too much. I am gladyou show my letters round in the family, for I like them all to know what I am doing, and I can'twrite to every one, though I try to answer all reasonable expectations. But there are a great manyunreasonable ones, as I suppose you know-not yours, dear mother, for I am bound to say that younever required of me more than was natural. You see you are reaping your reward: I write to youbefore I write to any one else.There is one thing, I hope-that you don't show any of my letters to William Platt. If he wants tosee any of my letters, he knows the right way to go to work. I wouldn't have him see one of theseletters, written for circulation in the family, for anything in the world. If he wants one for himself, he has got to write to me first. Let him write to me first, and then I will see about answeringhim. You can show him this if you like; but if you show him anything more, I will never write toyou again.I told you in my last about my farewell to England, my crossing the Channel, and my firstimpressions of Paris. I have thought a great deal about that lovely England since I left it, and all thefamous historic scenes I visited; but I have come to the conclusion that it is not a country in which Ishould care to reside. The position of woman does not seem to me at all satisfactory, and that is apoint, you know, on which I feel very strongly. It seems to me that in England they play a veryfaded-out part, and those with whom I conversed had a kind of depressed and humiliated tone; alittle dull, tame look, as if they were used to being snubbed and bullied, which made me want to givethem a good shaking. There are a great many people-and a great many things, too-over here thatI should like to perform that operation upon. I should like to shake the starch out of some of them, and the dust out of the others. I know fifty girls in Bangor that come much more up to my notionof the stand a truly noble woman should take, than those young ladies in England. But they had amost lovely way of speaking (in England), and the men are remarkably handsome. (You can show thisto William Platt, if you like
