And in a post-scriptum note in his
handwriting, it was stated that the Ode had
appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, December,
1772. Her letters back to her husband
(treasured as fondly by him as if they had
been M. T. Ciceronis Epistolæ) were more
satisfactory to an absent husband and father,
than his could ever have been to her. She
told him how Deborah sewed her seam very
neatly every day, and read to her in the
books he had set her; how she was a very
"forrard," good child, but would ask
questions her mother could not answer; but how
she did not let herself down by saying she
did not know, but took to stirring the fire,
or sending the "forrard" child on an errand.
Matey was now the mother's darling, and
promised (like her sister at her age) to be a
great beauty. I was reading this aloud to Miss
Matey, who smiled and sighed a little at the
hope, so fondly expressed, that "little Matey
might not be vain, even if she were a beauty."

"I had very pretty hair, my dear," said
Miss Matilda; "and not a bad mouth."
And I saw her soon afterwards adjust her
cap and draw herself up.

But to return to Mrs. Jenkyns's letters.
She told her husband about the poor in the
parish; what homely domestic medicines
she had administered; what kitchen physic
she had sent. She had evidently held his
displeasure as a rod in pickle over the heads
of all the ne'er-do-wells. She asked for his
directions about the cows and pigs; and did
not always obtain them, as I have shown
before.

The kind old grandfather was dead, when
a little boy was born, soon after the publication
of the Sermon; but there was another
letter of exhortation from the grandfather,
more stringent and admonitory than ever,
now that there was a boy to be guarded from
the snares of the world. He described all
the various sins into which men might fall,
until, I wondered how any man ever came to
a natural death. The gallows seemed as if it
must have been the termination of the lives
of most of the grandfather's friends and
acquaintance; and I was not surprised at the
way in which he spoke of this life being "a
vale of tears."

It seemed curious that I should never have
heard of this brother before; but I concluded
that he had died young; or else surely his
name would have been alluded to by his
sisters. By-and-bye we. came to packets of
Miss Jenkyns's letters. These, Miss Matey
did regret to burn. She said all the others
had been only interesting to those who loved
the writers; and that it seemed as if it
would have hurt her to allow them to fall
into the hands of strangers, who had not
known her dear mother, and how good she
was, although she did not always spell quite
in the modern fashion; but Deborah's letters
were so very superior! Any one might
profit by reading them. It was a long time
since she had read Mrs. Chapone, but she
knew she used to think that Deborah could
have said the same things quite as well; and
as for Mrs. Carter! people thought a deal
of her letters, just because she had written
Epictetus, but she was quite sure Deborah
would never have made use of such a
common expression as "I canna be fashed!"

Miss Matey did grudge burning these
letters, it was evident. She would not let
them be carelessly passed over with any quiet
reading, and skipping, to myself. She took
them from me, and even lighted the second
candle in order to read them aloud with a
proper emphasis, and without stumbling over
the big words. Oh dear! how I wanted facts
instead of reflections, before those letters were
concluded! They lasted us two nights; and
I won't deny that I made use of the time to
think of many other things, and yet I was
always at my post at the end of each sentence.
The rector's letters, and those of his wife and
mother-in-law, had all been tolerably short
and pithy, written in a straight hand, with
the lines very close together. Sometimes the
whole letter was contained on a mere scrap of
paper. The paper was very yellow, and the
ink very brown; some of the sheets were (as
Miss Matey made me observe) the old
original Post, with the stamp in the corner,
representing a post-boy riding for life and
twanging his horn. The letters of Mrs.
Jenkyns and her mother were fastened with a
great round red wafer; for it was before Miss
Edgeworth's "Patronage" had banished wafers
from polite society. It was evident, from the
tenor of what was said, that franks were In
great request, and were even used as a means of
paying debts by needy Members of Parliament.
The rector sealed his epistles with an
immense coat of arms, and showed by the care
with which he had performed this ceremony,
that he expected they should be cut open, not
broken by any thoughtless or impatient hand.
Now, Miss Jenkyns's letters were of a later
date in form and writing. She wrote on the
square sheet, which we have learned to call
old-fashioned. Her hand was admirably
calculated, together with her use of
many-syllabled words, to fill up a sheet, and then
came the pride and delight of crossing. Poor
Miss Matey got sadly puzzled with this, for
the words gathered size like snow-balls, and
towards the end of her letter, Miss Jenkyns
used to become quite sesquipedalian. In
one to her father, slightly theological and
controversial in its tone, she had spoken of Herod,
Tetrarch of Idumea. Miss Matey read it
"Herod Petrach of Etruriæ," and was just as
well pleased as if she had been right. I can't
quite remember the date, but I think it was
in 1805 that Miss Jenkyns wrote the longest
series of letters; on occasion of her absence
on a visit to some friends near Newcastle-
upon-Tyne. These friends were intimate
with the commandant of the garrison there,
and heard from him of all the preparations