MY DEAR BESSIE--I write to you as Mrs. House, Mrs. Pomona, Mrs. Flora, _i.e._ as having, under your aunt and Miss Deiss, sovereign rule in the domestic, horticultural, and floral departments at Chichester, but not as Mrs. Ceres, as with respect to the farm I reserve the rule therein to John and Symonds, and Smoker and myself, which may account for the bad condition things in that department are in.... Now, in your domestic department let me suggest to you to order preparations for the return of the veritable heads of the family, possibly on Friday next, to dinner, but you may expect to hear again. Then, in the horticultural, know that a tub of regent potatoes, and eke a tub of blues, containing each about a sack, may daily be expected. They are to be used as seed at your and Holmes's discretion. Those which are not so used you may direct to be put from time to time into a pot and saved for dinner. In your floral department I do not presume to give any hint; the greater will be your responsibility if either violets are drooping or snowdrops and crocuses not in sufficient abundance. Poor me! I am afraid they are all over, blossomed and gone while I have been smoke-dried here. But mind you show me something when I come, or I may prove a rat without a tail. Pray, why do none of you little pusses write to me? I desire I may have an olla podrida, a bit of something from every one, without delay. How do you think I am to get on here all by myself? Yes, indeed! Pray, look to it, Mrs. House, and mind your P's and Q's, and do not laugh, but let me have my letter from all in a cluster, and I daresay in a clatter too forthwith. So no more at present from your and their fond parent and most loving father, A. T. CHICHESTER. I suppose you know poor aunt E. M. has left you her piano. If your grandpapa does not think it too large and would let it go to Culham, should you object? In August 1846 Bessie completed a long poem founded on a belief "which prevails in parts of Burgundy, that the first flower which blossoms on the grave of a departed friend links the soul of the departed in eternal love to that of the person who gathers it." The verses are moderately smooth and pretty, but give no great promise of excellence in that department. It is, however, characteristic of the writer that she represents the "departed friend" not as a lover, but as the father of the girl who has gathered the first blossom, and that she concludes: