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Farmington June 22nd ’38.
Friday Morning.
My Dear Brother,
I have waited in vain for a letter from you, and concluded as there is no prospect of a private opportunity, to send the bag by stage today.
Miss Smith and Mrs. Ingraham arrived day before yesterday, and the meeting was held yesterday afternoon. The Hall was full of ladies and every thing was conducted with perfect propriety. Every one, I believe, was agreeably disappointed.: Miss Smith is a highly cultivated young lady of about 26 or 7, I should think; as she is very lame, she could not stand, but sat by the table and spoke about half or three quarters of an hour, and in so sweet a voice and gentle a manner, and with such elegance and propriety of language, that every one was charmed, and forgot all about “the sphere of woman”. She does not approve of ladies speaking in promiscuous assemblies, and she does not wish, herself, to deliver addresses even to ladies. She prefers that the meetings should be conversational, and says she never attended but one before that was not so. A society was formed of sixty six members, with Mrs Dr Porter for First Directress, and Mrs D. Norton for the second. Almost all the nobility of Farmington were there, and a large proportion of them joined the Society.
I have not a minute more. I am glad you have not got to pay for this. Yours as ever C—and do write.
[Written vertically along the margin:] Will you please send back “Recollections” the next time the bag comes if you have time to read it, and not if you have not?
[annotation by Samuel Cowles:
Charlotte
June 22, 1838]