o months since
my return have convinced me of its truth, which I have fought against for
many years; for even the most staid of us who, either of choice or
necessity, give the social vortex a wide berth, cannot escape from the
unrest of it, or sight of the wreckage it from time to time gives forth.
It is strange that I have not met this Cortright, or never even knew that
he shared your father's admiration of your mother, though owing to our
school tie we were like sisters. Yet it was like her to regret and hold
sacred any pain she might have caused, no matter how unwillingly. Did his
elder sister marry _a_ Schuyler, though not one of _the_ well-known
branch, and did he as a boy live in one of those houses on the west side
of Lafayette Place that were later turned into an hotel?

"The worst of it all appears to me to be that the increase of wealth in
the upper class is exterminating the home idea, to which I cling, single
woman as I am; and consequently the middle classes, as blind copyists,
also are tending to throw it over.

"The rich, having no particular reason for remaining in any particular
place until they become attached to it, live in half a dozen houses,
which seems to have a deteriorating effect upon their domesticity; just
as the Sultan, with fifty wives that may be dropped or replaced according
to will, cannot prize them as does the husband of only one.

"Your letters are so full of questions and wonderments about ways in your
mother's day, that they set me rambling in the backwoods of the sixties,
when women were sending their lovers to the Civil War, and then bravely
sitting down and rolling their own hearts up with the bandages with which
they busied their fingers. I suppose you are wondering if I lost a lover
in those days, or why I have not married, as I am in no wise opposed to
the institution, but consider it quite necessary to happiness. The truth
is, I never saw but two men whose tastes so harmonized with mine that I
considered them possible as companions, and when I first met them neither
was eligible, one being my own father and the other yours! I shall have
to list your queries, to be answered deliberately, write my letters in
sections, day by day, and send them off packet-wise, like the
correspondence of the time of two-shilling post and hand messengers. To
begin with, I will pick out the three easiest:--

"1. What is it in particular that has so upset me on my home-coming?

"2. Do I think t