We have a little room in the third story (back) with white muslin curtains trimmed with evergreen, and are as happy as two mortals can be. I think Maria is better, and I _know_ I am--in health I mean, in spirit we both are. She is gaining flesh and so am I, and my cheeks are grown so preposterously red that I look as if I had rubbed them against all the red brick walls in the city. I have seen your friend ---- since I came here. Somebody called on us the very evening after we arrived, and on going downstairs who should it be but our interesting friend. He attacked me upon the subject of a vegetable diet, and I replied by fun, which rather disconcerted him. He has not been here since. I have felt a little of the swell of fashionable society since I have been here. Dr. Elwyn, a kinsman of mine, hearing that I was in town, called upon me and has been very attentive ever since. He is an agreeable man and somewhat literary for Philadelphia. His mother, who has lately quitted Episcopacy for Presbyterianism, called on us to-day, and told me that her “pastor,” the Rev. Dr. Bethune, was coming to see me. Authorship might have taken the place of misery in Shakespeare’s aphorism. The abolitionists here are very pleasant and kind.... Maria sends her best love. I mean Mrs. Lowell sends it. Give my kind remembrances to Austin and to Owen. The package of the latter came safe. God bless you! Most lovingly yours, J. R. L. Mrs. Lowell sings her second in this duet in a letter to Mrs. Hawthorne, written two days later, in which she says: “We are most delightfully situated here in every respect, surrounded with kind and sympathizing friends, yet allowed by them to be as quiet and retired as we choose; but it is always a pleasure to know you can have society if you wish for it, by walking a few steps beyond your own door. We live in a little chamber on the third story, quite low enough to be an attic, so that we feel classical in our environment: and we have one of the sweetest and most motherly of Quaker women to anticipate all our wants, and make us comfortable outwardly as we are blest inwardly. James’s prospects are as good as an author’s _ought_ to be, and I begin to fear we shall not have the satisfaction of being so _very_ poor after all. But we are, in spite of this disappointment of our expectations, the happiest of mortals or spirits, and cling to the skirts of every passing hour, though we know the next will bring us still more joy.”[47]