Fenstanton Nr St Ives Hunts.

Oct. 8th / 68

My Very dear Friend

We leave this place for Bournemouth in a few weeks. This is the last note you will receive dated from it. I shall probably go to Stow Market, Suffolk, about the Middle of January, but I cannot help hoping that I may yet have a few lines from you during the month of December. God knows how much I need just now the sympathy of a beloved friend like you. The future never looked darker, nor the present more sad. All is very very hard to be up and doing—still achieving and pursuing—in my present circumstances! Yet it must be done.

for alas! There are thousands of Aching hearts, like mine in this poor world, and broken as mine is. I trust I may still be enabled to soothe and console some of them. I forget if I ever told you, in my letters that my poor, dear brother had left five orphans. The eldest a sweet, loving accomplished, beautiful girl, just 19 years of age had a situation as governess in Germany. She was beginning to be useful to her widowed mother, whose dearest hope and consolation she was. It had been a hard struggle to part with this beloved child, but we all felt it was necessary. The dear girl suffered much at first, from the home sickness, peculiar to the Swiss, but she had got over it, and was beginning

to feel quite happy, in her new circumstances. She was beloved by every body. I was so proud of her—for I had educated her, at least, given her the means to cultivate her talents. She loved me devotedly. A few weeks ago, she was attacked at Cologne by the Typhus fever, and she was cut off, be before any of her relatives had time to go to her. She died, far away from her Mother and her dearly loved Country! Oh, dear friend, you cannot imagine how deeply I feel this blow! But alas, yes you can! Oh I wish you had not. My beloved friend passed through the same very ordeals. She was the precious child, the one member of my family who thoroughly, and always understood me, and sympathized with me and God has taken her away!

Oh, what a void I feel in my heart! Yes I must live and labor, and Struggle on. I dread beginning again. God Knows. My nerves have been so shaken that I almost daily suffer from neuralgia in the head. I trust I shall not become quite ill. Excuse the expressions of all these fears. It does one good to tell you all. Your example will keep me up. I shall not give way. You have suffered still more than I have. May God help us both. I know you will feel for me, and think of me sometimes. One of Mr. Coate's sons started about ten days ago for America. He is not very bright (between us) and his father thought going to America would make him more manly.

His departure was decided on so suddenly. And just when I received the terrible news of the death of my precious niece, that I could not send you many little remembrances, which I was hoping to have ready for the first good opportunity. I had not finished your dear brother's wrapper, but I put in a pair of cuffs for him—(I shall send him the other things by & bye)—and one pair for you, dear friend. Also, for you, two very small drawings, little Swiss sketches. Perhaps you may find some corner, in your library to put them in. Until I send you two good, large sketches one of them, I am finishing for you, I also put in a picture book on cloth for little Annie.

some Scissors for Mrs. Douglass and a little remembrance for dear Rosetta. Give my love to her. I feel sure she has not quite forgotten me. Miss CarpenterCarpenter, Mary

Mary Carpenter (1807-77) was the daughter of British reformer and Unitarian minister Lant Carpenter, and with her brother Philip Lant Carpenter, was a social justice activist. She began operating a girls' school in Bristol in 1829 with the help of her mother, Anna Penn Carpenter. Finding the care of poor children her life's calling, in 1835 Mary formed the Working and Visiting Society and in 1852 opened her own reformatory for boys. In the 1850s and 1860s she lobbied for industrial schooling in Britain and opened two schools of her own. In her later years she traveled widely and lectured in Britain and India on education and penal reform. She was inspired to visit India as a result of her father’s friendship with Rammohun Roy, a Bengalese teacher and religious educator who established the Brahmo Samaj, a brotherhood made up of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. Roy visited Mary’s father, Lant Carpenter, at the Lewis Mead Unitarian Church in Bristol, but died shortly afterward from meningitis in 1833. Mary visited India four times, where she established a school for Hindu girls and became active in social reform. Jo Manton, Mary Carpenter and the Children of the Streets (London, 1976), 18-30; Jennifer S. Uglow, ed., The International Dictionary of Womens Biography (New York, 1982), 94; Mary Carpenter, Six Months in India (London, 1868).ACAB, 1:531-32; DNB, 3:1068-70, 1071-72; DAB, 1:561. starts in about a week for India. I think she means to settle there altogether. And she still looks forward to my joining her. The Sturges and Albrights have Again offered me a home, and the superintendence of their daughters' education. Unfortunately I had just engaged to to into Suffolk, when the offer came. I should have preferred going to them

But it really seems that I am never, never to have what I wish for. Everything seems against me. I wonder if some of us are really destined to suffer. Perhaps it is the only means of softening the heart, and of teaching us true Sympathy. If so, Oh, it is better to be afflicted for it is terrible to be indifferent to the sorrows of our fellow creatures. I know, by sad experience, what it is, to be surrounded by those, upon whom fortune ever Smiles. How hard hearted they are! Their coldness is worse to bear than the sorrow which breaks the heart.

My beloved friend, I must send these very hasty lines to day, for I shall then hope to have another letter from you, if you get this, by the end of October. I know you will write if you can, Once more, to Lisle House Bournemouth Hampshire

Yours, my beloved friend, for ever devotedly,] and affectionately

Rosine Amé-Draz