Here we really are, and perhaps you, who are not here, will believe it more readily than I who am, and to whom it seems an impossible kind of dream from which I must surely presently wake.  We made New York harbor Monday night at sunset, and cast anchor at twelve o’clock off Staten Island, where we lay till yesterday morning at half-past nine, when a steamboat came alongside to take the passengers to shore.  A thick fog covered the shores, and the rain poured in torrents; but had the weather been more favorable, I should have seen nothing of our approach to the city, for I was crying bitterly.  The town, as we drove through it from the landing, struck me as foreign in its appearance—­continental, I mean; trees are mixed very prettily with the houses, which are painted of various colors, and have green blinds on the outside, giving an idea of coolness and shade.

The sunshine is glorious, and the air soft and temperate; our hotel is pleasantly situated, and our rooms are gay and large.  The town, as I see it from our windows, reminds me a little of Paris.  Yesterday evening the trees and lighted shop-windows and brilliant moonlight were like a suggestion of the Boulevards; it is very gay, and rather like a fair.

The cholera has been very bad, but it is subsiding, and the people are returning to town.  We shall begin our work in about ten days.  I have not told you half I could say, but foolscap will contain no more.  God bless you, dear!

Affectionately yours,
F. A. K.

The foreboding with which I left my own country was justified by the event.  My dear aunt died, and I married, in America; and neither of us ever had a home again in England.

NEW YORK, September 16, 1832. 
MY DEAREST H——­,

What shall I say to you?  First of all, pray don’t forget me, don’t be altered when I see you again, don’t die before I come back, don’t die if I never come back....  You cannot imagine how strange the comparisons people here are perpetually making between this wonderful sapling of theirs and our old oak seem to me....  My father, thank God, is wonderfully improved in health, looks, and spirits; the fine, clear, warm (hot it should be called) atmosphere agrees with him, and the release from the cares and anxieties of that troublesome estate of his in St. Giles’ will, I am sure, be of the greatest service to him.  He begins his work to-morrow night with Hamlet, and on Tuesday I act Bianca.  It is thought expedient that we should act singly the two first nights, and then make a “constellation.”  Dall is in despair because I am to be discovered instead of coming on (a thing actors deprecate, because they do not receive their salvo of entrance applause), and also because I am not seen at first in what she thinks a becoming dress.  For my part, I am rather glad of this decision, for besides Bianca’s being one of my best parts, the play, as the