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Wednesday: October 6, 1864. It is not necessary, my dear friend, to repeat in this the reasons given in your Sister's explanation of our being here. - Last night yours of the 25th came, and your earlier one, addressed to me at Atlanta, did not miss. How glad I was to get it: how glad I always am to receive letters from you. [superscript begin] omit [superscript end] Will you let me tell you how - not in my fancy but in my head - I have painted you. As being refined and gentle to a charm; governed by a sense of duty so profound as to hold every action and pap in life to its subordination; no ascetic, lashed to dogmas, but one slow to condemn, yearning to approve; true as steel to one faith, but tolerant of others; wide in sympathy, and with a charity that glows and spends because it cannot contain itself. It has been my good fortune in life always, among women, to be honored with the friendship of the purest and best: or rather, I should have said, to Escape the friendships of such as were not so. Lady Byron - widow of the immortal - by whom I was educated and in a measure brought up - Miss Milford, Mrs. Jameson, Miss Cook (Eliza, the songstress:) women of large and reverent views and aims; if it had not been for the influence of such as these, and of my own blessed mother who illustrated how all sanctities and virtues could walk hand in hand with the most pinching poverty and need,