"Even to the delicacy of their hands There was resemblance, such as true blood wears." --BYRON. "LONDON, ENG., November 16th, 1873. "Dear, dearest mother, whom I long so much to see that it seems impossible to write you, sitting tamely here, all that is in my heart, how can I express my grief and anxiety at hearing that you are still in that terribly stricken city, and that there seems no present prospect of the abatement of that awful epidemic? Oh, mother, how could you go--you, and brother Willie, and Grace--all my dear ones--when you knew what anguish it must cause me in my absence? I know that it is right--know that it is a Christian's bounden duty to comfort the sick and afflicted, and I honor you each in my whole heart for such noble, self-sacrificing devotion as you are displaying. But oh, how my heart is aching with the dread! Oh, mother, what if one of you should be taken away? Oh, I cannot, cannot bear the thought! And yet a strange _presentiment_ weighs on me that on one or the other of your dear faces I will never look again in this world. Bruce, dear Bruce, who is so kind and loving to me, tells me these are only homesick fancies. Aunt Conway persuades me that I am only nervous and depressed, and that my fancies are but the result of my feeble condition of health just now; but am certain that it is more than all this. I pray that it may not be, but my whole heart sinks with a sense of prophetic dread, and if Bruce would only consent, I should at once return to the United States and join you in Memphis; but neither he nor Aunt Conway will listen to such a thing--their plans being made to spend a portion of the winter in Italy, certainly--and the chances are I shall not see you, my sweet mamma, until spring, though how I shall survive our separation so long I cannot tell. I miss you--oh, I miss you so much! and I have wished for you so often! Even dear Bruce cannot make up to me my loss in you. "I suppose it is not necessary to describe all that I have seen in this great city, as Brother Willie's letters from here were so exhaustive and entertaining that they have left no new field of description on which to waste my spare stock of adjectives.