How are you both?
I do hope and trust you can give me good news of yourselves.

Do you read aloud to one another or each alone?
Robert and I do the last always.

May God bless you both in health of body and soul, and every source of happiness for the coming and other years! I wish and pray it out of my heart....
And you are studying music?
I honour you for it.

Do tell me, dearest Mrs.Martin, did you know nothing of music before, and have you taken up the piano?
I hold a peculiar heresy as to the use hereafter of what we learn here.

When there is no longer any growth in me, I desire to die--for one.