always has seemed to me that distinguished people here in England live
a remarkably out-door sort of life; and newspapers tell a vast deal
about people's concerns which it is not our custom to put into print
in America. Such, for instance, as where the Hon. Mr. A. is staying
now, and where he expects to go next; what her grace wore at the last
ball, and when the royal children rode out, and what they had on; and
whom Lord Such-a-one had to dinner; besides a large number of
particulars which probably never happen.

Could I have expected dear old England to make me so much one of the
family as to treat my humble fortunes in this same public manner? But
it is even so. This week the Times has informed the United Kingdom
that Mrs. Stowe is getting a new dress made!--the charming old
aristocratic Times, which every body declares is such a wicked paper,
and yet which they can no more do without than they can their
breakfast! What am I, and what is my father's house, that such
distinction should come upon me? I assure you, my dear, I feel myself
altogether too much flattered. There, side by side with speculations
on the eastern question, and conjectures with regard to the secret and
revealed will of the Emperor of Russia, news from her majesty's most
sacred retreat at Osborne, and the last debates in Parliament, comes
my brown silk dress! The Times has omitted the color; I had a great
mind to send him word about that. But you may tell the girls--for
probably the news will spread through the American papers--that it is
the brown Chinese silk which they put into my trunk, unmade, when I
was too ill to sit up and be fitted.

Mr. Times wants to know if Mrs. Stowe is aware what sort of a place
her dress is being made in, and there is a letter from a dressmaker's
apprentice stating that it is being made up piecemeal, in the most