-bye, dearest H----.... Oh, I should like to see you once again!

I am ever yours,
F. A. B.

BRANCHTOWN, July 31st, 1836.
MY DEAREST H----,

You ask me if I do not write anything; yes, sometimes reviews, for which
I am solicited. It is an occupation, but returns neither reputation, the
articles being anonymous; nor remuneration, as they are also gratuitous;
and I do it without much interest, simply not to be idle. As to anything
of more literary pretension, I never shall attempt it again: I do not
think nature intended mothers to be authors of anything but their
babies; because, as I told you, though a baby is not an "occupation," it
is an absolute hindrance to everything else that can be called so. I
cannot read a book through quietly for mine; judge, therefore, how
little likely I am to write one....

You ask me if I take no pleasure in gardening; and suggest the cutting
of carnations and raising of lettuce, as wholesome employments for me.
The kitchen-garden is really the only well-attended-to horticulture of
this place. The gardener raises early lettuces and cauliflowers in
frames, which remunerate him, either by their sale in market or by
prizes that he may obtain for them. His zeal in floriculture is less; as
you will understand, when I tell you that, discovering some early
violets blowing along a sunny wall in the kitchen-garden, and seizing
joyfully upon them, with reproaches to him for not having let me know
that there were any, he replied--"letting fall a lip of much
contempt,"--"Well, ma'am, I quite forgot them violets. You see, them
flowers is such frivolous creatures." Profane fellow!

I spend generally about three hours a day pottering in my garden, but,
alas! my gardening consists chiefly of slaughter. The heat of the
climate generates the most enormous quantity of insects, for the
effectual prevention or destruction of which the gardeners in these
parts have yet discovered no means. The consequence is that, in spite of
my daily executions, every shrub and every flower-bush is fuller of
_bugs_ (so they here indiscriminately term these displeasing beasts)
than of leaves. They begin by _eating up_ the roses bodily (these are
called distinctively, rose-bugs; of course, they have a pet name, but
it's Latin, and is only used by their familiars); they then attack and
d