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46    Juvenile Letters.

Letter XVIII.

From Miss Sophronia Bellmont to Miss Caroline Courtland.
Hanover,(N.H.)Aug.1802

Dear Caroline, 

At your request, I again resume the pen; but I doubt whether in my epistles, sufficient to compensate you for the trouble of reading them. This I will premise, that if you expect to gain much geographical or historical knowledge from my correspondence, you will be disappointed. I hope, at least, however, to learn something myself, by keeping a kind of journal. But were I to copy from that all the names of the towns, their distanced from each other, the best public houses, the number of inhabitants, the face of the country, soil, &c. all which are indeed useful to be known, my letters would be dry, and tediously prolix.

As in travelling the roads of this rough country, one is constantly going up hill and 
down,


Juvenile Letters.    47

down, so,many things occur on a journey, which tend to raise and depress the spirits of the traveller. 

We started from Boston with fair weather; found good roads; and on every side, the country presented a variegated, picturesque appearance, which enlivened the imagination, and excited emotions of gratitude towards that Being, who in wisdom made, and governs all things. 

I felt in high glee, till we stopped to dine, at a tavern in Lyttleton. Here I was witness to a scene of distress, which sunk my spirits to the lowest ebb. O, Caroline! had you been present, how would your benevolent heart have ached, to behold a wretched mother, ematiated to a skeleton, walking the room, an innocent babe, of about a year old, in her arms, in the last stage of a consumption! The mother could not be persuaded to part with it a moment, though she was ready to drop down with fatigue. The pitiful look of that expiring infant is still impressed on my mind. Ere this time, I trust it is lisping the 
praises. 

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