[Manchester—Monday, 13 August 1866]
Monday—a morning of mist. Upon awaking the fog-bell was the first sound which fell upon our ear. After breakfast the rays of the burning sun fell through the watery drops of which the sky seemed made up and shone classily on the grass and flowers. The cobwebs “shook their threaded tears in the wind” and the earth lay wrapped in a weird still beauty most unlike the noisy music of a summer morning, half sun half shadow yet so strangely conmingled it were hard to tell whether sun or shadow made up the larger portion of our day. Do we ever know until the sun predominates and burns away into high noon the full value of these water-drops of existence which make our waste places green and the sunshine, when it appears, more brilliant.
What would I give to render permanent even to memory the beauty of this morning—the weird mist resolving itself into a giant figure at length and stalking away over the far seas—the vision of the sadness of the seas,—the strength and life and glory of the land, sharply contrasted, like the life of one smitten by sorrow when standing by another in the full light of love’s joy.
Mr & Mrs Aldrich and Dr Bellows came and the rest of the day was given to company and gay talk. But my mind constantly reverts to the dear solemn hours by the shore with no one but the sea to speak, when I seem to touch the border of infinity. Dear little Lillian is ill.
