Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/212

afraid you must have double rows—and that is a plague. But you may ask why do i conceive yon nave double rows? Because I cannot conceive how else the hook-cases could bold the 10,000. Your Library is 34 by 22 you say. But to be sure you have not given me the height and that height may make out room enough. Pray have it measured for me; that I may drive this odious notion of double rows out of my head—"and what a head, you may say. that must be that could calculate in such a place and at such a time!" It was not my poor head I assure you. my dear Mrs. Ticknor, but Captain Beaufort's ultra-accurate head. I gave him through Honora the description of your library—and he (jealous I am clear for the magnitude and number of his own library and volumes) set to work at 22x34—and there I leave him—till I have the height to confound him completely. You see, my dear friends, that you need not again ask me to go to see you—for I have seen and I know everything about your home; full as well I know Boston and your home as you know ours at Edgeworthstown. It is your turn now to come to see us again. But I am afraid to invite you. lest you should be disenchanted, and we should lose the delightful gratification we enjoy in your glamour of friendship. Aunt Mary, however, is really all you think and saw her—and in her 91st year still a proof as you describe her,—and a remarkable proof of the power of mind over time, suffering and infirmities; and an example of Christian virtues making old age lovely and interesting.
Your prayer, that she might have health and strength to enjoy the gathering of friends round her has been granted. Honora and her husband, and Fanny and her husband, have all been with us this summer for months ; and we have enjoyed ourselves as much as your kind heart could wish. Especially "that beautiful specimen of a highly cultivated gentlewoman," as you so well called Mrs. E., has been blest with the sight of all her children round her, all her living daughters and their husbands, and her grand-children. Francis will settle at home and be a good country gentleman and his own agent—to Mrs. E.'s and all our inexpressible comfort and support—also for the good of the country, as a resident landlord and magistrate much needed. As he is at home I can be spared from the rent-receiving business, &c, and leaving him with his mother, Aunt Mary and Lucy, I can indulge myself by accepting an often-urged invitation from my two sisters Fanny and Honora, to spend some months with them in London. I have chosen to go at this quiet time of year as I particularly wish not to encounter the bustle and. dissipation and lionising of London. For tho' I am such a minnikin lion now. and so old, literally without teeth or claws, still there be, that might rattle at the grate to