"I am rejoiced to hear you're alive and well,[3] and you will be pleased to know I am, considering my age, quite hearty. I suppose you don't think I'm alive, or would have written to me. Now I hope, if these few lines reach you, to receive a letter in return from my youngest born, who I love, although I have not seen or heard from him for eleven years. You will be wondering how I came to hear of you. Well, to make a long story short I were a sitting by the fire one snowy night about a month ago, when some one knocked at the door and begged shelter for pity's sake, as he were near frozen. Your Cousin Ellen, who lives with me--I live now in 'Trotman's Charity.' You know the row of almshouses. Very comfortable they are, too, and good of the founder, who has been dead two hundred years. Well, Ellen, who writes this for me, went to the door and saw a man covered with snow, and nearly starved from cold. I asked him to come in and draw up to the fire, seeing he were a sailor; and after he got a little thawed, he told me his name was Harry Tomlin, and that he'd run away from a man-of-war at the Cape of Good Hope, then entered a ship bound for Australia, where he landed without a shilling; and he gave us a long account of his adventures, how he'd made some money, and had arrived in England a few days ago, and were bound to Eythorne that night, but had been overtaken by the snow, and nearly frozen to death. Me and Ellen heard his story with tears in our eyes; and when he had finished I asked him if ever he had been in a merchant ship, as I had a dear boy who were a sailor, and who were, I feared no more. Upon which he says, 'But why not in a man-of-war, marm?' 'Because,' I said, 'my Jerry were too good-tempered as a lad to spill people's blood, and I know he wouldn't enter a man-of-war; Heaven forbid,' said I. 'Jerry, marm,' he said. 'Why, you never mean to say Jerry Thompson, do you?' Upon hearing of which I fainted away, and were some time before I could hear all about your being so good and clever; and, in fact, you ought to be a captain but for the regulations not allowing. He left the next day after giving me your direction, and I have sent this letter to the place he said. Now, my dear boy, write me as soon as you can, and believe I love you as much as ever. With love, in which Ellen joins, I am your affectionate mother, "FANNY THOMPSON." "P. S. The old lady gets about wonderfully, and with your aunt, Mary Golder; is living in the alms-house where Miss Hoodruff used to live. They both talk a great deal about you, and it will be a dutiful act for you to write to her now and then. Probably you have forgotten me, as I was but a child when you left, but I remember you gave me a kiss when you bade me good-bye.