to-day, was to go and see a person who
has thought proper to go out of her mind about me. She is poor and
obscure, the sister of a tailor in this town; she had a little
independence of her own, but lent it to the State of Pennsylvania, after
the fashion of Sydney Smith, and has lost it, or at any rate the income
of it, which, after all, is all that signifies to her, as she is no
longer young and will probably not live to see the State grow honest,
which its friends and well-wishers confidently predict that it will.

This poor woman is really and positively mad about me, as I think you
will allow when I tell you that she is never happy when she sees me
unless she has hold of my hand _or my gown_; that she has bought a
portrait of me by Sully, over which she has put a ducal coronet, as she
says I am the _Duchess of Ormond_! It is really a serious effort of good
nature in me to go and see her, for her crazy adoration of me is at once
ludicrous and painful. But my visits are a most lively pleasure to
her--she thanks me for coming with the tears in her eyes, poor thing;
and it would be brutal in me to withhold from her a gratification
apparently so intense, because to afford it her is irksome and
disagreeable to me. Her name is N----, and she told me to-day (but that
may have been only another demonstration of her craziness) that there
was a large disputed inheritance in Ireland left to heirs unknown of
that name; that the true heirs could not be found, and that she really
believed she might be entitled to it if she only knew how to set about
establishing her right. She is the daughter of an English or Irish man,
and her family were well connected in England (I couldn't help thinking,
while she was talking, of your and my uncle John's dear Guilford). What
a curious thing it would be if this poor, obscure, old, ugly,
half-insane woman were really entitled to such a property! She is
tolerably well educated too, a good French and Italian scholar, and a
reader of obsolete books. She is a very strange creature.

I forget whether I told you that I had taken Margery up to Lenox with
me, in the hope that the change of air and scene might be of benefit to
her; but ever since her return she has been ill in her bed, poor thing!
and though the only servant-girl she had has left her, and she is in the
most forlorn and wretched condition possible, neither her mother nor her
sisters have been near her to help or comfort her--such is the Ro