MONDE TO EDITH.

Wednesday, Dec. 24th.

Blessed Edith! Guess who said this to-day, after I had been reading aloud in the Westminster Review—“I don’t understand a word, hardly, about this constructive policy and conservative elements, or what sort of difference there is between them. It indeed, seems to me that they must mean really the same thing. Don’t it to you?”

“Oh no, aunt.”

“No, I suppose not; for you are like your uncle. He talks about these things a great deal, and about the political economists, too, as if they were something like gods—or very mischievous men, for I am sure, now I think about it, I can’t tell which it is—whether he approves them or not. At any rate, if they are wise and good men, I think he is as good as the best of them can be, I am sure”—with a long sigh, and listlessly drawing the point of her needle along the hem she was making—“there isn’t an hour, hardly, that I am not wondering at all he knows, and wishing that I were a hundredth part as wise.”

“I wouldn’t mind this, aunt. You are good and kind, and everybody loves you. Aunt! aunt! see! Ponto has upset your basket; he is eating your spools, isn’t he? What a naughty dog.”

Ponto took the reproof for so much coaxing, and came scrambling over me. Aunt half-sighed, half-laughed, and said—

“This is the way Ponto serves me, if I don’t see to him. And I never do see to him, or any thing else, when I am talking or trying to think closely, never; I am discouraged sometimes, especially when I think how different you and your uncle are; and Mother Hedelquiver would see to twenty things, as if they were but one—I would give all the world that I could do the same. Ponto, Ponto, be still, or I will box your ears!”

But he didn’t be still, nor did aunt box his ears. He slipped off from beneath her hand and ran over the carpet like a bewitched thing, with a sleeve of the dress aunt was making in his mouth. He is a splendid little spaniel, the pet of all in the house, and I believe the fellow knows it.

I have had letters from home since I wrote before, and see what my mother says—“You are right, my good Rosamonde, truth is best for us; not only for its own great sake, but, as you, say, we feel so much better and nobler every way when speaking and acting it; and, besides, it serves us best in the end. It has been serving us a good turn, as you shall hear presently.

“Mrs. Hayden called here the day that we got your last. You know I have always tried to keep up appearances before her more than almost any other, she has things in such style at home. If she has ever called when I was feeling discouraged about our affairs I brushed the depression all away, you know, and was as lively and full of this and that thing that was going on, as if I hadn’t a care in the world. I was, in fact, never myself for one minute in her company until that day. Well, when she came in I was alone, your father was going here and there in the city, to make it appear that he had a great deal on his hands I have no doubt, and I was in tears over your letter—I brushed the tears off a little, but they ran again as soon as she began to speak kindly to me; and she was really as kind as a woman could be, Rose—so I told her all about our discouragements, how long they have lasted, how they were growing deeper, and all; and read her your letter and showed her the bank-bills. She was very sober, and as I had never seen her so before, it didn’t seem to me that it could be the same Mrs. Hayden that usually comes in once in six months, and after sitting fifteen minutes, talking of the weather, crotchet-work, her domestics and the like, goes out again as cold and stately as she came. She sat close beside me, and threw off her bonnet when she found the strings troublesome. She said she wished I had spoken of these things before, for that your father might have been helped to a good business in the first of it, as well as not. She told me to be of good courage, to be thankful that I have such a daughter. Here her tears started and mine ran again—she said she would speak to her husband, his brother, and hers, and all would soon be right.

“And all is right. Two retainers have already come in, one of fifty dollars, another of twenty. Old Judge Bailey sent for your father the other day—the judge is uncle to Mrs. Hayden; your father read with him six months, but never had put himself in his way, and so the judge had quite lost sight of him. He told your father that he would be in need of him often, and that if he—the judge, I mean—does sometimes scold and send the chairs against the wall when the gout is on him, your father must let it go as if it were a little rain and hail; he will give him, at the same time that he scolds, good work and good pay. I hope he wont scold, for I think your father is too proud to bear much—he would sooner sacrifice the work and the pay. I am afraid that nearly all these energetic patrons are either cross or whimsical, or have some troublesome fault. Your father says that, according to your Uncle Frederick’s philosophy of compensation, they are likely to have. Well, we must wait and see.

“P. S. I left this for your father to write a little, if he could find time; but he can’t, as true as you live. He is busy early and late with great books, and pens, and sheets of paper, and parcels of documents tied up with red tape. You don’t know how good this seems. He is as happy with it as a child, and proud of being all fagged out. You would be delighted to see him; he looks younger by ten years than he did a fortnight ago. He wants you to come home now. He says he couldn’t have consented to your going to stay so long but that he thought it might be pleasanter for you there. I couldn’t certainly. I hope you will try to come sooner, for, guess who comes in to inquire about you—Esquire Charles Hayden; our Mr. Hayden’s youngest brother, you know, just home from California when you went away. He has established himself here; has his office close by your father’s; was in last evening, and didn’t want to talk of anybody but you. Mrs. Hayden had been telling him about you.

“Good-bye, dear. Mrs. Hayden has just sent me word that she will call in an hour, with Charles, to take me out to ride with them. I believe it more and more, that truth is best. Don’t you, Rose?”

No, my mother! I should believe it all the same, if, in following after it, you had been led into countless difficulties and tribulations, I should still believe it altogether best, because best for the soul, let what will come—come to the body.

Mr. Marsden, one of the village merchants, went to Boston yesterday, and aunt commissioned him to tell Alfred Cullen, with whom he deals largely, to come up and spend New Year with her and uncle. Now heaven forbid!

Uncle says—“Come, Monde, come and hear what that rascally Louis Napoleon is doing.” I go, for France is, as it were, our next door neighbor in these days.

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