MY dear Molly,--If my well-known hand did not strike you, the sight of all the black around this letter, and the mourning seal, might suggest the thought that your poor Jemima was no more. Your next impression will be that Providence had sent for K. I. No, my dear Molly, I am still reserved for more trials in this vale of tears. I must bear my burden further! As for K. I., he's just as he used to be,--croaking away about the pain in his toe, or a gouty cramp in his stomach. He's always taking things that disagrees with him, and what he calls the "correctives" makes him worse. I cannot give you the least notion of how irritable he 's grown. You know as well as anybody the blessings he has about him. I don't speak of myself, nor the stock I came from. I don't want to revive the dreadful mistake that I made in my youth, nor to mention the struggles I 've had with him on every subject for more than five-and-twenty years,--struggles, my dear Molly, that would have killed any one that had n't the constitution of a horse; but that now, thanks to the goodness of Providence, have become a part of my nature, so that there is n't an hour of the day or night that I 'm not able and willing to dispute and argue with him on any question whatsoever. I don't want to mention these blessings,--but is n't there James and Mary Anne, and, indeed, except for some things, Caroline,--was there ever a father with more reason to be proud? And so you 'd say if you only saw them. As a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Gore Hampton, said this morning, "Where will you see such natural advantages?" And I must own, Molly, it's not flattery; for the way they talk French and waltz, even how they come into a room, salute, or sit down, has something in it that shows them to be brought up in the top of fashion. Any other man than K. I. would overflow with gratitude for all this, but you 'd scarcely believe, Molly, he only ridicules it! "If we meant her for the stage," says he,--this is the way he talks of Mary Anne,--"if we meant her for the stage, I think she has effrontery enough to stand before a full house, and I don't say it would discompose her; but for the wife of some respectable man of the middle rank, I see no use in all this flouncing about here, and flourishing there, whisking through a room, upsetting small tables and crockery by way of gracefulness, and never sitting down on a chair till she has spread out her petticoats like a peacock!"