[Manchester—Sunday, 14 August 1870]
Sunday. August 14. A cold rain set in last night and everything was drenched this morning so we have had a day indoors except a drive to Gloucester this afternoon. We saw the town glimmering in the distance as we approached more like some of the towns of the Cornice road in Italy than any thing in America. We passed not far from Norman’s Woe and with the music of a plaintive little poem by Hiram Rich in my head I longed more than ever to have a summer foot hold on that Cliff.
At night Miss Oakey sang us Moore’s ballads which her mother taught her and which she learned from Moore’s own lips. After hearing Mrs Oakey sing his songs one evening Moore wrote her the next day a charming note in which he said in listening to her he felt like “a wizard who had been caught in the spells of his own teaching.”
