account for your breach of promise. What is the reason you did not come to my window, as you agreed to do, the morning you left Asheville? I got up before four o'clock and waited and watched, at last grew angry, and wished in revenge that you might have fine weather and plenty of ripe blackberries the whole way! It was a very shabby trick, and if you do not render a satisfactory explanation I shall—scold you well when next we meet.
Your domestic items all interest me. How do you like the change of teachers in the school, and who will superintend your room? Will Dr. Ray still teach? You must tell me also what day school begins, that I may think of you and Billy sitting with grave faces behind the little wooden desks, rivalling one another in intense application.
Did you take home any stones for our cabinets? Does the collecting fit continue, or has it vanished with the departure of Mr. Hildreth? I have not obtained many specimens as yet; little Sarah Dickson takes great interest in bringing me what she considers pretty rocks, and putting them on a newspaper on my window seat. I was really surprised the other day to see how pretty they looked, though, of course, not of much value—little bits of quartz, white, grey, brown, pink; a stone full of mica, which looks like a piece of lead ore; a conglomerate of gneiss quartz tinged with some metallic substances, and with garnets embedded in some of the stones; and flints of various colours; nothing to a professed mineralogist, but pleasing to me.
Last week I went to a party at Mrs. P.'s. She has a separate establishment from the hotel, with which she does not choose to have anything to do. I was invited to meet some Charleston ladies who had called on me, and made themselves very agreeable. I suppose you would have been most pleased with the eatables (the ice-cream, whips, jelly, and cakes were delicious), but what delighted
