Nantucket Sunday 8th July 1838

My Dear and Honored Parents

Your agreeable letter of the 8th came duly to hand- Isay agreeable, in general but the portion written by our dear and so often afflicted Mother, made our hearts ache to the core, though it was more on Mother's account than our own - We are as truly sensible of the deep sorrows that Mother has been compelled to wade through as any one, and most humbly do we beg her forgiveness for all that we have caused, and deeply, sincerely and affectionately do we sympathize with her, in what she has had to bear from others. We now for an instant forget how near and dear you are, Dear Mother, and we think that we are old and experienced to judge and say, but for that same sheet anchor, which Mother possesses in the person, and character of our honored Father, her frail bark would have long ago been stranded.-Mother's present trouble I consider to be a minor affair, and regret that it worries her so much.

I cannot attach any more importance to it, than to a transaction that occurred a few moments since.-Charley took it into his head to go to church--As he was going out, he took from a bunch of a dozen out of Judith's pitcher a rose -Judith discovered it, and is quite huffy about, and declares she will not speak to him for the day, and is tempted to pick the blossoms off his hill of potatoes. He will be in directly and she will be the first one to run and greet him, to ask if Amelia R. Abrams was at church, and if she wore that open work straw bonnet with the pink ribbon. What Father says of domestic affairs, the new born, the turnpike, &c. is highly interesting to more than our own immediate family. Harriet retains a lively recollection of the localities of the various objects around the house and the fields, orchards, &a Her companions listen with live eyes and envious feelings of her recollections of apples ankle deep, riding on horseback...and "Sister Deborah's Julia" is the very acme of anything related to horseflesh. We have had it very dry and hot for some time and the gardens and upland grass suffer.- Lydia sits fanning and reading the Inquirer. Harriet is up in her chamber and I suppose "making observations on this one's looks and that one's dress." Judith is up in her baby house (a commodious closet), has dressed all her dolls for Sunday, and is giving them an early dinner served up in

penny shells-Lydia and Harriet wilt easy, but as for "ram sham" Judi, I tell her she is an untiring as a young tigress or Sumatran hyena. - They are all thus far all we could wish them. The girls have never missed getting a prize at their respective examinations since they have been going to school. Judith has obtained next to the highest twice in succession and competing with girls 10, 11, and 12 years of age. Not so with Charley -Though as far advanced as any of them of his age, that long string of demands at the end of the quarter interfered in hauling out his Jews harp to see if the tongue is safe, smuggling a suck from his pickled lime, -swapping orange peels with his desk mate for flag root-all of which delinquencies are duly noted ad registered by the hawk eyed assistants, the Miss Barneys, Miss Eastons &c. The schools are now closed for three weeks as usual on account of the heat. In the school house next door to us, there are congregated twice a day 460 children between 4 and 14 years of age. I dreaded its near locality at first, but we should feel quite lonesome to have it removed now. Their cheerful voices, when in their respective yards, at recess, is to me delightful -- When they all pour out at noon or in the evening I am generally on the look out, peeping through the blinds, or through the crack in the front door to see the fun - There are few boys now of from 9 to 12 who have quibbles among themselves to have a hook down, but consequently to the "lee" under our windows, with regard to the localities of a city, or a province in Europe or Ohio, its boundaries &c &c., Ps-contra, there goes a couple of girls, doing as they think a" great knack", as Aunt Alby says dragging on his belly a lump of 4 year old boy, because he was going to go away and go in swimming! His Mother said he might if he was a good boy; but afterwards told his sister, to ask Betty her cousin, to help her bring him home, and if he wouldn’t come and was naughty she'd whip him! Away he goes and at every yell, scoops up with his lower jaw a mouthful of sand and steering about as wild as an old fashioned one horse plough with the coulter unshipped. The little fellow goes home, and setting aside the poignant disappointment, of which his thoughtless and ignorant Mother was the author (perhaps and as often the case the Father) he is denied a portion of his dinner, is sent again with throbbing brain to his studies -I do not say that such events are very common, but they do occur, and when such materials and in such a state is sent to the teacher, he is censured if he does not enlighten the heart stricken boy and cursed if he attempts to come at, and enliven the sensibilities by the lash and stimulate them to industry by their same parents, who laid the foundation of their present ignorance and misery, and secret hatred

perhaps in after life to all hands —when because he was often deceived during his juventude by a lie, I was led imperceptibly to these few remarks , and don't wish parents to think that such things (though in one instance to much so) are now common. We have already  to a state of things that would agreeably surprise Father and Mother. No distractions are made -the female assistant (No. 1) in the Coffin School, is daughter of David Luce, and will pass examinations with any of the Boston ladies of her age. One of the little Holmes's (a large portion of the family, now amalgamating, on the frontier of New Guinea) obtained at the New Town school house, the highest prize for two successive quarters-. Time was, when Jenks was stemming a simoom! When curses both loud and deep were heaped upon him, by the rich (aristocracy)-and No! Not the millionth part of a farthing would they give per force, i.e. by law to "educate other people's children"-! have heard in bygone times, when I was saying what the people in Ohio were doing, and describing the cold rides, the fatiguing arguments of Father, many such observations, and in fact asseverations, and then sworn to, with denunciations against what they called a "direct tax in a new dress." as heavy almost as their silence in the vaults, or their credit at the banks-."

How is it now? Why, Jenks is a smart writer-What a fine exhibition of such a school.-was you there today? Let 'em fetch in their Boston schools- I'd have given something out of my own pocket if the committee had done so and so-" (meaning had things finer) Jenks and my self hear much of this for I have always been since '27 in the same coterie as him, and I have made one, however small, when the wicks of lamps in the reading room began to get dry, and I have found mine in the corner, and "all asleep". I laugh sometimes, and say to Jenks, thus; when some one of the old appears, of every thing which you wrote, said, or did in favor of our paying the tax agreeably to law for schools, swaggers round him, and think he throws -mud in your eyes, by asking pompously, "Who: opposed the introduction of public schools upon us?" Why don't you, before he can answer the question with "Not I"! Clap your fingers upon his shoulder and say as Nathan did unto David? - He laughs and says" faint worth while. They know they be, and the very idea of them thus undervaluing my records, memory, and discernment, is a proof that they did not have the advantage, their children equally require, and are now receiving-" I looking back, I see that I bend one subject on to another with perhaps too short a splice, but I am not engaged in an historical essay, and believing that parents

feel the deepest solicitude for the well being of us and any. I would feign indulge in my remark, and hope not to be considered as boasting- Our children have never been told a lie, by either of us -With regard to the provisions, water and small stores aboard, they know as well as we do -what such an article costs - and all about it -They are never and never have been told that there was not a mite of cake in the house, and a few minutes afterwards such a plate full came upon the table for company -! As for stealing we don't think of it., of them -We keep nothing locked up -A bead purse containing upon on average a dollar or two in change is in the old work bag, which Lydia had in Ohio and hangs near the bed room fireplace -Either, or the whole, are sent to get change from it, and when returning from an errand, the only question from Mother is. "How much of a hank did you give or how much a pound?" The purse is put back and that settles it. To call Harriet or Charles up and say, here, I want to count, and see if you have taken any, would mortify them beyond measure. Lydia is slender but I tell her she is tough - Our acquaintances and valued friends are numerous, but we are tied to no visits of ceremony or uncomfortable parties-. In this respect we work admirably in the traces of matrimony as did old Charley and Ball in theirs of the plough-. When on duty abroad, or travelling I have enough of the hypocrite to act, and to see acted, stiffened with the insignia of brief authority to induce me to enjoy some of the moments as they fly, and always eschew (politely of course) the idea of going to parties when they attempt to imitate the soirees of Washington, and Paris.— Sunday 15th. Reuben Coffin and wife having done up the visit will be off on Wednesdays day before yesterday, I was rebuking one of the children for some trifle, but they caught be foul, for Harriet could accuse me of the same trick-"ah" says Lydia, "but that's an iron one" ten minutes afterwards I was walking down the Straight wharf as they were docking the mail packet, and who should I meet but John Starbuck! Seven days from Cincinnati. After shaking hands I put some questions, but he knew nothing, nor anything about anybody-I asked him if he had a nice garden this year - He replied" Yes" -I told him they had got to using rakes with iron teeth to them here, and wondered if they had them in Ohio yet-" Oh, I got two," said he." and one," I've had" says he," I Kellate, I do no how Iong"-To save laughing in his face I bade him good day in a hurry-, business here is at a very low ebb- Coasters, mechanics &c. out of employment and the necessaries of life very dear. A great many have turned