excessively tame for him after his experience of your society and
conversation; so that, I think, you will shine the more by contrast."

One evening, she says, she "showed him Sarah Clarke's picture of the
island, and that gorgeous flower in the Chinese book of which there is
a mighty tree in Cuba. And then I turned over the pictures of those
hideous birds, which diverted him exceedingly. One he thought deserved
study. . . .

"I was to go to see his sister Elizabeth that afternoon, and he had
heard about it. He asked if I could go, and said he should have waited
for me to come if he had not supposed the east wind would prevent me.
I said that it would. He wanted to know if I would come the next day.
I meant to call Mary, but he prevented me by saying he could not stay
long enough. . . . [He seldom stayed unless he found Sophia alone.]

"Last evening Mr. Hawthorne came for Mary to go with him to Miss
Burley's [to a club which met every week]. Mary could not go. It
seemed a shame to refuse him. I came down to catch a glimpse of him.
He has a celestial expression which I do not like to lose. . . .

"The children have just come in, and brought me a host of odorous
violets. I made George a visit in the afternoon, in the midst of my
battle with headache, and to my question of 'How dost?' he replied,
for the first time, 'Pretty fair,' instead of the unvarying
'Middling.' Skeptics surely cannot disbelieve in one thing that is
invisible, and that is Pain."

May, 1838.