"She will [referring to Mary], I fancy, if she stays, make one of the family rather than of the patients; and the old and young ladies I like exceedingly, and she loves them dearly; and they, as the saying is, take to her very extraordinarily--if it is extraordinary that people who see my sister should love her. Of all the people I ever saw in the world, my poor sister was most and thoroughly devoid of the least tincture of selfishness ... and if I mistake not, in the most trying situation that a human being can be found in, she will be found (I speak not with sufficient humility, I fear) but humanly and foolishly speaking, she will be found, I trust, uniformly great and amiable...." His next letter reveals something of the sister's state of feeling under the distressing circumstances. "Mary continues serene and cheerful. I find by me a little letter she wrote to me; for though I see her almost every day, yet we delight to write to one another, for we can scarce see each other but in company with some of the people of the house. I have not the letter by me, but will quote from memory what she wrote in it: 'I have no bad, terrifying dreams. At midnight, when I happen to awake, the nurse sleeping by the side of me, with the noise of the poor mad people around me, I have no fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend and smile upon me, and bid me live to enjoy the life and reason which the Almighty has given me. I shall see her again in heaven; she will then understand me better. My grandmother, too, will understand me better, and will then say no more, as she used to do, 'Polly, what are those poor, crazy, moythered brains of yours thinking of always?'" In another letter he says: "I am wedded, Coleridge, to the fortunes of my sister and my poor old father.... What would I give to call her back to earth for one day? on my knees to ask her pardon for all those little asperities of temper, which from time to time have given her gentle spirit pain? and the day, my friend, I trust, will come. There will be time enough for kind offices of love, if heaven's eternal year be ours. Hereafter her meek spirit shall not reproach me." Mary, on this first occasion, remained in the asylum at Islington for some months. Eventually, upon the solemn promise of her brother that for his life she should be under his especial care, he was permitted to take her under his own protection. He did not, however, remove her at once to his own home, but provided for her in lodgings at Hackney. Alluding to her at this time, he writes: "To get her out into the world again, with a prospect of her never being so ill again, this is to be ranked not upon the common blessings of Providence. May that merciful God make tender my heart and make me as thankful as, in my distress, I was earnest in my prayers!"