ay, Sept. 23rd, 1860._

ON THE DEATH OF HIS MOTHER.

MY DEAR E. Y.,

I did not write to you in your bereavement, because I knew that the
girls had written to you, and because I instinctively shrunk from making
a form of what was so real. _You_ knew what a loving and faithful
remembrance I always had of your mother as a part of my youth--no more
capable of restoration than my youth itself. All the womanly goodness,
grace, and beauty of my drama went out with her. To the last I never
could hear her voice without emotion. I think of her as of a beautiful
part of my own youth, and this dream that we are all dreaming seems to
darken.

But it is not to say this that I write now. It comes to the point of my
pen in spite of me.

"Holding up the Mirror" is in next week's number. I have taken out all
this funeral part of it. Not because I disliked it (for, indeed, I
thought it the best part of the paper), but because it rather grated on
me, going over the proof at that time, as a remembrance that would be
better reserved a little while. Also because it made rather a mixture of
yourself as an individual, with something that does not belong or attach
to you as an individual. You can have the MS.; and as a part of a paper
describing your own juvenile remembrances of a theatre, there it is,
needing no change or adaption.

Ever faithfully.

[Sidenote: Miss Dickens.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Sunday, Sept. 23rd, 1860._

MY DEAREST MAMIE,

If you had been away from us and ill with anybody in the world but our
dear Mrs. White, I should have been in a state of the greatest anxiety
and uneasiness about you. But as I know it to be impossible that you
could be in kinder or better hands, I was not in the least restless
about you, otherwise than as it grieved me to hear of my poor dear
girl's suffering such pain. I hope it is over now for many a long day,
and that you will come back to us a thousand times better in health than
you left us.

Don't come back too soon. Take time and get well restored. There is no
hurry, the house is not near to-rights yet, and though we all want you,
and though Boy wants you, we all (including Boy) deprecate a fatiguing
journey being taken too soon.

As to the carpenters, they are absolutely maddening. They are always at
work, yet never