Just so, knowed you'd take advantage of my silence to write su'thin saucy. Until I got your kammunikation I felt kind o' penitent like--hadn't thanked for no Xmas nor nothing. Felt self to be shabby and piglike in conduct, though perfectly angelic in intention. Pop comes your letter--pop goes my repentance. "She's got even with me," I said: "If she went into a tailor's shop to get a cabbage leaf, to make an apple pie, what does it matter by what initials she calls herself? Who's going to distress themselves about the set of her cloak? And she do boast about it preposterous, and that are a fact." Here endeth the first meditation, and I will now fall back upon the "Dearly beloved," for the rest of the service.... _To the same_ 241 BEACON STREET, February 11, 1884. _Oh, thou, who art not quite a Satan!_ Question is, dost thou not come very near it?... I have been very busy, and have _orated_ tremendous, this winter. I didn't go for to do it, you know, but I cou'n' avoin it. [A household expression, dating back to her childhood, when a gentleman with a defect of speech, speaking of some trouble incurred by her father, said, "Poor Mr. Warn! he cou'n' avoin it!" This gentleman was a clergyman, and was once heard to assure his congregation that "their hens [heads] wou'n be crownen with glory!"] "_February 12._ Hearing at State House, Committee of Probate, etc., on the petition of Julia Ward Howe and others that the laws concerning married women may be amended in three respects. We had prepared three separate bills, one providing that the mother shall have equal rights with the father in their children, especially in determining their residence and their education. A second ruling that on the wife's death, the husband, who now gets all her real estate, may have one half, and the children the other, and that the widow shall have the same right to half the husband's real estate after his death. A third bill was devised to enable husband and wife to contract valid money obligations toward each other." Through the untiring efforts of the Suffragists these bills were all passed. "_March 27...._ I heard with dismay of the injury done to my Newport place by the breaking of Norman's dam. Was very much troubled about this." _To Laura_ March 29, 1884. MY DEAREST DARLING,--