"MY DEAR ANNE,--You will not calculate upon so speedy an answer as this
to your long and welcome epistle, nor will you calculate upon the
melancholy intelligence I have to communicate. Poor John's wife,
certainly the most amiable of all woman-kind, departed this life at
twenty minutes past eleven last night. Her recovery from her confinement
was very wonderful, we thought, but alas! it was a false one. The Drs.
Whitaker of Shaw, Wood of Rochdale, and Bardsley of Manchester all agree
in opinion that she has died of mere weakness without any absolute
disease. She has been very delicate for a long time. Poor dear John--if
I were quite indifferent to him I should grieve to see his agonies--he
says at sixty it might have happened in the common course of things and
he would have borne it better, but at twenty-nine, just when he is
beginning life, his sad bereavement does indeed seem untimely. It is a
sore affliction to him, sent for some good, and may he understand and
apply it with wisdom! They had, to be sure, hardly been married long
enough to quarrel, but I never saw a couple so intent on making each
other happy; they had not a thought of each other but what tended to
please. The poor little boy is a very fine one, and I hope he will be
reared, though it often happens that when the mother is consumptive the
baby dies. I do hope when John is able to look after his office a little
that the occupation of his mind will give him calm. He walks from room
to room, and if I meet him and he is able to articulate at all, he says,
'Ah! where must I be? what must I do?' He says nobody had such a wife,
and I do think nobody ever had. He wanted me not to write till
arrangements were made about the funeral. I thought you would be sorry
to be informed late upon a subject so near John's heart, and that it was
too late for Mr. Hinde [Footnote: The Rev. Thomas Hinde, Vicar of
Featherstone, brother-in-law of the writer of the letter.] to come to
the funeral. I have really nothing to say except that our poor sister