“One evening, two days after our arrival at the Old Manse, George Hilliard and Henry Cleveland appeared for fifteen minutes on their way to Niagara Falls, and were thrown into raptures by the embowering flowers and the dear old house they adorned, and the pictures of Holy Mothers mild on the walls, and Mr. Hawthorne’s study, and the noble avenue.  We forgive them for their appearance here, because they were gone as soon as they had come, and we felt very hospitable.  We wandered down to our sweet, sleepy river, and it was so silent all around us and so solitary, that we seemed the only persons living.  We sat beneath our stately trees, and felt as if we were the rightful inheritors of the old abbey, which had descended to us from a long line.  The tree-tops waved a majestic welcome, and rustled their thousand leaves like brooks over our heads.  But the bloom and fragrance of nature had become secondary to us, though we were lovers of it.  In my husband’s face and eyes I saw a fairer world, of which the other was a faint copy.”

Nearly two weeks later she continues in the same letter, “Sweet, dear Mary, nearly a fortnight has passed since I wrote the above.  I really believe I will finish my letter to-day, though I do not promise.  That magician upstairs is very potent!  In the afternoon and evening I sit in the study with him.  It is the pleasantest niche in our temple.  We watch the sun, together, descending in purple and gold, in every variety of magnificence, over the river.  Lately, we go on the river, which is now frozen; my lord to skate, and I to run and slide, during the dolphin death of day.  I consider my husband a rare sight, gliding over the icy stream.  For, wrapped in his cloak, he looks very graceful; impetuously darting from me in long, sweeping curves, and returning again—­ again to shoot away.  Our meadow at the bottom of the orchard is like a small frozen sea now; and that is the present scene of our heroic games.  Sometimes, in the splendor of the dying light, we seem sporting upon transparent gold, so prismatic becomes the ice; and the snow takes opaline hues from the gems that float above as clouds.  It is eminently the hour to see objects, just after the sun has disappeared.  Oh, such oxygen as we inhale!  After other skaters appear,—­young men and boys,—­who principally interest me as foils to my husband, who, in the presence of nature, loses all shyness and moves regally like a king.  One afternoon Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau went with him down the river.  Henry Thoreau is an experienced skater, and was figuring dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice,—­very remarkable, but very ugly methought.  Next him followed Mr. Hawthorne, who, wrapped in his cloak, moved like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave.  Mr. Emerson closed the line, evidently too weary to hold himself erect, pitching headforemost, half lying on the air.  He came in to rest himself, and said to me that Hawthorne was a tiger, a bear, a lion,—­in short, a satyr, and there was no tiring him out; and he might be the death of a man like himself.  And then, turning upon me that kindling smile for which he is so memorable, he added, ‘Mr. Hawthorne is such an Ajax, who can cope with him!’”