E.F. Delancey 1859

Grass Valley, Nevada Co., Cal

July 15, 1859

My Dear Miss Esther, –

I expected to hear from you by the last Steamer, but was disappointed.  I perhaps should not say “disappointed” for you said in the last letter I received that you would be at leisure after the 1^st July, where you should be able to attend more fully to my cravings.  You have perhaps found out ere this the capacity of my stomach for larger doses, and have perhaps concluded that you would make me wait a little.  I confess when I am sick to favoring the homeopathic regimen, infinitesimal doses of medicine – but when I am____why away with homeopathic doses and let me have my fill.  I repeat the cause may be as above why you prefer making me wait one steamer or so, while you in the meantime are taking lessons in “the management of a family” etc.  In this respect you are acting very prudently and I commend you for it.  I have thought too, that probably I might have given some offense in my last letter in reference to the French extract in Shirley.  The suggestion was made in the very best feeling and I should regret if it were not received in the same spirit in which it was given.  But I will not anticipate anything of the kind as I deem it praiseworthy rather than otherwise, in a lady to obtain all the accomplishments in her power.  But as I have said before, I will not anticipate, and therefore, please, when you do write let me have a good long letter.  Never mind what you say or what you post in it you can call me anything and everything you please, and turn me about any way you please, and say anything over and over again any way you please – but only give me a good long dose of it for I’ll read every word you write over and over again.  You perhaps will think I am getting crazy in writing this way – but I ain’t.  I confess I feel fidgety – feel as if I can’t rest satisfied – feel a kind of all overish feel that no steamer ought to be allowed to come to California without a letter from you to me on board.  If I were the Government at this moment, I feel as if I would make just such a law, viz. that no steamer should be allowed to land in California or enter the port from the Atlantic States, or I was going to say from anywhere else, that had not on board a letter directed thus:

To/ Edwin F. Delancey

Grass Valley, Nevada Co, Cal

And signed thus

Your affectionate etc.

E. F. Dimond

I say I feel as if I could make this the Supreme law of the land and for the least violation of which I would declare both vessel and cargo forfeited and sell all the crew and passengers into slavery.  I write perhaps in excited terms, or what you may perhaps think as harsh terms, but just think, I have not had a letter so long that I have been compelled to begin at the beginning and read over every one of your letters for I really believe the fiftieth time; and now just let me tell you what I have made up my mind to do, and you needn’t laugh, for I’ll do it.  I won’t put you in the ‘Nand Look Up Book of Excuses’, no indeed I won’t do anything of the kind, but I’ll just read you letters over so often that I’ll get every word at my tongue’s end, and then when we meet and our first k___ is over, just step out and repeat to your very face every word you have written, yes, every word.  Including dates, signatures and everything, and I’ll do it as sure as your name’s Esther, or as sure as that a namesake of yours was once a Royal Queen.  Now don’t this make you feel dreadful, don’t you feel as you hadn’t ought to, for if you do you feel just as I do, and that is , I’ll be hanged if I can’t tell how.  I feel that something is going to make me feel glad or miserable soon, and what it is I can’t guess – but it makes me fidgety and fussy – and bids fair to make me, what I really think I am getting to be, a devilish fool, for pestering you to read such stuff as this.  But dear Esther, I can’t help it, and you are just as much in fault as I am – you’ve just been as bad as I have and it is no more than right that you should feel just as I do, and I hope you will, for then like me you won’t know or be able to find out what the deuce is the matter, only that you want something you feel must have something, you expect to get something and you don’t know whether you will get it or not. Yet have it you must and have it you will or “feathers will fly.”  But I must not write in this strain any longer, for if I do so, the next thing will be to throw off my hat and shouting “Here’s for Salisbury.”  Rush for San Francisco and aboard of the steamer and let business go to the dogs.

I do not think I can answer your last letter at very great length this time.  I made an attempt at answering it before which you have err this received no doubt.

I see an extract or rather a sentence in it reading thus- “Now don’t you feel flattered to think you have made a proselyte of me so easily.”

My answer to this is: “I don’t feel half as much flattered to think I have made a proselyte of you as I would to think (need original) that I had made a something else of you.”

Thus again:  I must tell of how I went to a wedding xxxxx I wondered as I looked upon them if I ever could stand up and promise to love, honor and obey a man as long as we both should live together, and I come to the conclusion I could!xxxx

The beauty of reading, is to profit by our reading, and the sure evidence of your profiting by our reading is given or developed in subsequent action.  The convicted felon, who had never received any tender rearing – but had been an outcast from his very birth, thus replies to a speech of a judge who was condemning him to death.  Among other things Society had done for him he said was this:

You taught me language,

And the profit out

Is – I know how to curse!

Not so with reading – it opens up new ideas to the mind – gives it something to reflect upon – to improve upon – and if availed of will as surely improve the mind so occupied as surely as that that mind sympathizes with matters.  Let me give an instance:

I wrote a letter once to a lady of my acquaintance.  In answer she wrote something like this, “I had thought of taking your inexplicable letter to the Ministers to have him comment upon it, etc.  In reply I expressed the wish that I had been there instead of the letter, so that she might have taken me to the Ministers instead of the letter and have him comment upon us both, winding up his comments with, “and you Esther promise etc, love, honor, etc, obey etc etc.  The answer to this was “I don’t think I should be willing to go to the Ministers and there promise to love, honor and obey! And again “When I am speaking with my friend I deny the existence of any such thing as true love,”  But this lady friend of mine subsequently perused a work which seemed to open up a new world of thought and among the beauties of that work she notes the following: “She speaks my mind when she says:  “Did not I say I prefer a Master xxxx A man I shall feel it impossible not to love and very possible to fear.”  Sometime after my lady friend attends a wedding and says:  “I wondered xxx If I ever could stand up and promise to love, honor and obey a man xxx and I came to the conclusion that I could.”  Thanks to Shirley and her talented authoress for her splendid work.  Here is an instance developed in subsequent action of the benefit of reading and thinking properly.  It makes me smile, too, when that lady writes me that she will not answer my letter on true love, while all the while giving sensible, tangible answer to it in her actions as just instanced for example.

But I have been reading another work lately which I would take the liberty of asking you to peruse for my sake.  I do this because I think you will like it.  The work in question is entitled:

“Robert Graham”  and is written by W. Caroline Lee Hentz

But you must excuse me for coming to so abrupt a conclusion.  I said to you before that I expected to be able to get clear of my mining claims for some other kind of property and perhaps in this way be enabled to reach home earlier that otherwise.  The gentleman with whom I expect to negotiate has just arrived and I must therefore, though very unwillingly, quit your pleasant society for business. Oh how I wish I had a likeness of you that I could set before me while writing to you but never mind.  I hope the day will come when I hope to have more than one likeness of you.  In the meantime, may all the blessing of earth, air and sky be yours.  While I remain,

Yours,

As Ever,

E. F. Delancey

P.S. Please don’t make the shortness of this an excuse for a short answer.  You know I’d write long, if circumstances permitted.

In haste,

E. F. D.