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How I have flung away everything - with both hands! Afterwards when I go back again over that road and see all that I have lost and look over those same fragments that I trampled upon, then in spite of my will there comes [[?]] a quiet sadness that [[?]] than those should become most precious to me, because they are broken now.
 
When your letter arrived last night (with what joyful signals from Maria, who, indeed, showed almost as much delight as I felt), I kept it by me unopened as long as I could. I do not know why, but that I almost feared to read it last what I had so wished to have. It was only a whim, but it gave me what I wanted in those lost words. If I could only see you again, coming across towards me from your gardens without a hat, my own little girl! only I am afraid I would never let you go again. Yes it is rather lovely here. My father is not very well, but we are great companions; and when I am alone I read. - If you knew how beautiful you have made everything seem to me, with new and deeper meanings! In the smallest details of nature, & in those noble poems & history to which I have gone back with greater love, all parts stand out with another light & charm, because you have passed by.

Anne -

June

My little Hope, you cannot know how changed this place has been without you. The acacias are weeping silently their white blossoms to the ground, and I feel somehow as if the gladness of summer were gone. I sit sometimes in the garden staring hard at a table whereon a little girl with deep blue eyes used to sit, while the summer wind blew about the tendrils of her dark hair, and the fragrance of a single rose in her dress seemed to fill all the place. And then, while I said all the disagreeable things I could imagine (and after it became more and more difficult to imagine them) I would 

Transcription Notes:
The end of the first left part of the page was extremely difficult to make out.