Black Circular Postmark:
Lebanon Ten Jan 6
Manuscript rate:
25
Addressee:
Miss Sarah Hyde
Cleaveland Ohio
Contents:
Lebanon November 21st 1839
Dear Cousin Sarah
I remember your injunction not to write until I was in the spirit.
I am always in the spirit of writing to those I love and in whose friendship I have reason to hope there is a receprocus felling.
Your request seemed to imply something more than a common interchange of mutual friendship and a relation of a few incidents in traveling from Cleaveland to Lebanon.
So I have been waiting for a talent to arrive to Communicate something to feast your fancy.
Should I continue to wait until I had become an interesting writer you surely could never hear from me.
January 3, 1840
You see my dear how long I have waited and altho our Christmas holidays gives me leisure to write and the
new year is also frought with many mercies and should be hailed with overflowing gratitude yet to me it has brought nothing to excite the imagination
so that degree of vividness is volatil ipistolury
[espistolary] correspondence that would at all answer your apparent anticipations.
But the past years has done much to lay low all my powers to arouse nonreisibilty were I inclined for the affection dispensation of its
providence has shrouded them in sack cloths for live this year to morn, and like you must say, I have no dear Mother.
How my heart writhes in anguish, it is the thoughts of never again knowing the kindness of a mothers care.
But there is sweetness in billing our sorrows to friends whose sympathies will mingle with our s in the recollection of those we love.
This death will bring you associations, dear and sweet of memory.
Zeviah and you will readily say how much our Father and Your other loved to commune together of the riches as grace in Christ,
the things of Heaven, the glory that should be revealed in those that loved him. And now, O how their in_____ spirits greet
each other and join the adoring millions in the song of redeeming love. I almost catch the enthusiasm (if is maybe called so) and long to be there.
But time is friendly and helps us on at a rapid rate.
We will soon be there. And may we dearest cousin follow as they followed Christ. Then we will meet then in the happy home of the soul.
We arrived safe in Lebanon only turned over once in the stage in
Kentucky no one was materially hurt. O let me tell you (I left a small trunk on board the Packet we left Cleavland in. I wrote to the Capt.
To send it to the Franklin House as he returned to Cleaveland for you. If you will give yourself the trouble to send for it, you are
welcome to its contence altho it contains nothing of much value).
A doll for your little nicec
[neice]. A box of curls for your self but particularly
the scissors and the gold thimble made of the rich alloy of copper and zink.
The specimen of black wedding cake one bit made in N York one in Boston, one at W H Point and a loaf given me by my dear Mother.
I was bringing it to please her and myself too, in recollection, but as I have left it she would have been delighted
if living to know that you would have eat it in recollection of her. It is now probably spoiled but if you obtain the trunk,
look at it as a last specimen of her friendship.
The grapes cousin Zeviah I will consign to you as being worth cultivating.
I was bringing them to plant. Father rode six miles to get them
[for] me.
Unquestionably they have fallen in better hands than mine if you get them for you will prove the luxurience of the vine in Ohio when transplants from Conn.
like yourself full of the fruit of good works.
In two days again I commence my labor of urging ______ the improvement of intellect. Here the difficulty and responsibility go hand and hand,
and when one at times seems insurmountable,
the other stimulates to achieve exertion until the obstacles are removed and my hopes are realized. And between 70 and 80 minds I find it enough to do.
Do write me soon. And don’t place me under and interdict again until I am brilliant because that can never be.
Asinath Ann Desires love and believe me in the warmest friendship and love.
Zeviah and Sarah
Harriat Able
H Able
From the Collection of Frederick
Smoot
