I return you many thanks for your friendly letter, which I received by my daughter, and I beg you would accept my warmest acknowledgments for all the kindness you have shown to my daughter for the many years she has been known to you. Her gratitude to you is without bounds, and she says nothing on earth will ever make her forget your goodness to her. I do not despair of being able, at some future period, to express to you in person, by word of mouth, the sense I entertain of your kindness to my dear child. You will not expect that I should attempt to describe the pleasure I felt at seeing my dear girl after an absence of twenty years! Some years afterwards the daughter gave a vivid picture of her father at this time. Count Rumford, my father, having passed several preceding years at Munich, in Bavaria, had come to England to have published some of his essays. He took the opportunity to send for me, my mother being dead, and I requiring protection. Many were the scenes he had passed through after leaving me as an infant, and erroneous were the ideas I had formed of him, particularly of his appearance; we having had only a small profile of him in shade, giving ever an imperfect idea of the person. Indeed, so different from what I had thought were his looks, that I could hardly fancy him the person I sought after, and would willingly have run from him, and ended in a violent fit of crying, which he did not consider as a compliment, asking me afterwards what I meant by it. The playfulness of his character (at times) secured love to my father. Witness his laughter, quite from the heart, nothing made up about it. The expression of his mouth, ornamented with the most finished pearls, was sweetness itself. But to see him accidentally, he did not strike one as handsome, or very agreeable, though not exactly to the contrary. At the time I met him, having been ill, he was very thin and pale--again a reason of my disappointment. My opinion of him was naturally romantic, perhaps, as young people’s often are. I had heard him spoken of as an officer. I had attached to this an idea of the warrior, with the martial look, possibly the sword, if not the gun, by his side. His profile being in black, made me suppose him dark in complexion, possibly sunburnt; in short, in stature, size, and looks the perfect warrior. Yet my mother often spoke of him as carroty, his hair being red; but later not so, a very pretty colour. My father pretended I looked better than he expected to find me. It is true he had had a most unfavourable likeness of me in a small miniature.