So you are going to take my boy away from me? I begrudge him, just a little, or just a good deal; but I will tell you a secret. I feel pretty sure that when I know you, I shall be grateful to him, instead of grudging, for giving me you for a daughter; and you must love me, for after all if it wasn't for me you wouldn't have him, would you? He has been a perfect son, and they make perfect husbands. And he loves you, my dear. Oh, if you had any doubts of it--which of course you haven't, or I shouldn't like you--but if you had, could you have read over my shoulder his letter to me to-day telling me about it. I am very impatient to know you, but I think we shall be great friends, through Rob, before we even meet. Till then believe me your--dear me, what?--your Robert's affectionate old mother. KATHERINE MILES STANTON. I am sending with this a little old jewel I found at an old shop the other day; it is a love ring of the sixteenth century. Perhaps you will find a place for it. I send it with my love. K. M. S. IV _Letter to Mrs. Henry A. Austin, Troy, N.Y._ Venice, Thursday. Dear Gertrude: You will be very much surprised to hear from me, I imagine, as a correspondence is something we could never keep up. But our friendship has lasted without it a long time, my dear girl--forty-two years--for we met when I was fourteen. I haven't forgotten yet how the whole school became bearable after you took possession of the other little white cot in my room. It's a year and a half now since I've seen you, and I've missed you. Troy is so near; and yet, after all, it is so far, too, when we realize how seldom we meet. You must give me a whole winter soon! Yes, for I am going to be alone; Rob is going to marry, and that's why I am writing you. It is to a Miss Lucy Stone, of Troy. Do write me about her. Do you know the family? Are they friends of yours? Rob is fearfully and wonderfully in love; and I can't blame him after seeing her picture. She is lovely (and charmingly dressed), and I am sure Rob would never fall in love with any one but a lady. Still, I want to know if she, or rather her family, are really smart people, or what. Even if they are "what," I'm sure it won't make any difference to Rob, and so it mustn't make any difference to me. But it will be a _relief_ to know that they are friends of yours, or even that you know them. I pretend not to believe in class distinctions, and I don't; but when it comes to your own son, somehow or other you do want him to choose his wife among his own social equals. Between you and me I am just about broken-hearted. I know it is very wrong of me, but I had sort of let myself grow very dependent upon him, and always had looked upon his marriage much as one looks upon death, as inevitable, but always remote and the end of all things. It still seems like the end of all things, but in time I shall get used to it. I feel simply ashamed of myself for feeling as I do now. Of course, if it were given me the