An odd thing! We had two or three old friends to dinner, & were discussing your administration; & had just arrived at the verdict that its quiet & unostentatious, but real & substantial greatness, would steadily rise into higher & higher prominence, as time & distance give it a right perspective, until at last it would stand out against the horizon of history in its true proportions, when your most welcome letter was brought in! And previously we had been discussing a paper which I am to read before a Club of young girls in Boston next Saturday, entitled “Mental Telegraphy,” wherein I use, as an illustration, the fact that an approaching letter often foreshadows its coming by flinging its writer into the mind of the person who is about to receive it.! ⟦One will never believe how frequent an occurrence this is, until he begins to watch for it & take note of it: I began six years ago.⟧

I am deeply gratified by the happy reception which the book has enjoyed at the hands of your household; & I am peculiarly grateful to you for telling me the pleasant news, when, if you had so chosen, you could have followed the world’s wrong custom & refused to take the trouble. Such an attention, coming from you, has a value which I do not underestimate; for whereas, coming from an ordinary source, it might be considered in some vague nebulous way a sort of duyty, no such duties attach to one who has worn the purple of sovereignty—it is then an act of grace, & its worth is multiplied accordingly.

Thanking you again, I am, with great respect,