d will survive all her
political changes, be they what they may, and, as long as the national
character remains unchanged, will maintain her present position among
the foremost peoples of the world; with which important and impressive
prophecy comfort yourself, dear Granny.

We are going out of town, to which we returned a fortnight ago,
to-morrow at half-past six in the morning, and it is now past midnight,
and I have every mortal and immortal thing to pack with my own single
pair of hands, which is Irish, Lord bless us! So good-night, dear
Granny.

Believe me ever your affectionate
FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, August 25th, 1843.

You will pay no more, dear Hal, for this huge sheet of paper, being
single, I believe, than for its half; and I do not see why I should
cheat myself or you so abominably as by writing on such a miserable
allowance as the half sheet I have just finished to you.

Mr. Furness's abolition sermons have thinned his congregation a
little--not much.... There is no other Unitarian church in Philadelphia,
where the sect is looked upon with holy horror, pious commiseration, and
Christian reprobation, but where, nevertheless, Mr. Furness's own
character is held in the highest esteem and veneration.

Your question about society here puzzles me a good deal, from the
difficulty of making you understand the absolute absence of anything to
which you would give that name. I do not think there is anything,
either, which foreigners call _societe intime_ in Philadelphia. During a
certain part of the year certain wealthy individuals give a certain
number of entertainments, evening parties, balls, etc. The summer months
are passed by most of the well-to-do inhabitants somewhere out of the
city, generally at large public-houses, at what are called fashionable
watering-places. Everybody has a street acquaintance with everybody; but
I know of no such thing as the easy, intimate society which you seem to
think inevitably the result of the institutions, habits, and fortunes in
this country.

It does not strike me that social intercourse is easy at all here; the
dread of opinion and the desire of conformity seem to me to give a tone
of distrust and caution to every individual man and woman, utterly
destructive of all freedom of conversation, producing a flatness and
absence of all inter