'I am duly favoured with your much-valued letter, and I am happy to
find that you are so much with my mother, because that sort of
variety has a tendency to occupy the mind, and to keep it from
brooding too much upon one subject. Sensibility and tenderness are
certainly two of the most interesting and pleasing qualities of the
mind. These qualities are also none of the least of the many
endearingments of the female character. But if that kind of
sympathy and pleasing melancholy, which is familiar to us under
distress, be much indulged, it becomes habitual, and takes such a
hold of the mind as to absorb all the other affections, and unfit
us for the duties and proper enjoyments of life. Resignation sinks
into a kind of peevish discontent. I am far, however, from
thinking there is the least danger of this in your case, my dear;
for you have been on all occasions enabled to look upon the
fortunes of this life as under the direction of a higher power, and
have always preserved that propriety and consistency of conduct in
all circumstances which endears your example to your family in
particular, and to your friends. I am therefore, my dear, for you
to go out much, and to go to the house up-stairs [he means to go
up-stairs in the house, to visit the place of the dead children],
and to put yourself in the way of the visits of your friends. I
wish you would call on the Miss Grays, and it would be a good thing
upon a Saturday to dine with my mother, and take Meggy and all the
family with you, and let them have their strawberries in town. The
tickets of one of the OLD-FASHIONED COACHES would take you all up,
and if the evening were good, they could all walk down, excepting
Meggy and little David.'

'Inverness, July 25th, 11 p.m.