DEAR MISS POTTER,--Accept my warmest thanks for the very kind manner in which you have expressed an interest in our happiness. It is all the more welcome in coming from a stranger upon whom I have no past claim to kindle a kindly regard, and touches my heart deeply. Among the many blessings which the new world I have entered reveals to me, a new heritage of friends is a choice one. Those most dear to Henry, most closely linked with his early associations, I am, naturally, most anxious to know and love,--and I trust an opportunity will bring us together before long. But I should feel no little timidity in being known to you and his family; a dread that loving him as you do I might not fulfil all the exactions of your hearts; were not such fears relieved by the generous determination you have shown to approve his choice,--upon faith in _him_. To one who has known him so long and so well, I need not attempt to speak of my happiness in possessing such a heart,--nor of my infinite gratitude to the Giver of every good gift for bestowing upon me the power of rendering him once more happy in the hope of a home,--so sacred and dear to his loving nature by blessed memories to which I fervently pray to be found worthy to succeed. Receive again my thanks for your kind sympathy, with the assurance of my warm regards,--which I trust will not always be imprisoned in words, and with kindest remembrances to my other Portland friends, I remain sincerely and gratefully yrs FANNY E. APPLETON. Henry sends his most affectionate regards and hopes, tho' faintly, to be soon able to visit his home, and talk over his future with you all.{70} It is pleasant to record in connection with this sweet and high-minded letter, that a copy of "Hyperion" itself lies before me which is inscribed on the first page in pencil to "Miss Eliza A. Potter, from her affectionate friend and brother, the Author." That he preserved through life a warm friendliness toward all the kindred of his first wife is quite certain. {61 _Life_, ii. 8.} {62 Beacon Biographies (_Longfellow_), p. 77.} {63 Garrison's _Memoirs_, iii. 280.} {64 Western MSS., Boston Public Library.} {65 _Life_, ii. 20.} {66 Scudder's _Lowell_, i. 93.} {67 _Correspondence of R. W. Griswold_, p. 151.} {68 MS.} {69 _White, Red, and Black_, ii. 237.} {70 MS.} CHAPTER XV ACADEMIC LIFE IN CAMBRIDGE