Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/85

I believe, of all my pleasures here, dear J. will most envy me that of seeing Joanna Baillie, and of seeing her repeatedly at her own home: the best point of view for all best women. She lives on Hempstead Hill, a few miles from town, in a modest house, with Miss Agnes Baillie, her only sister, a most kindly and agreeable person. Miss Baillie—I write this for J., for we women always like to know how one another look and dress—Mis Baillie has a well-preserved appearance; her face has nothing of the vexed or sorrowing expression that is often so deeply stamped by a long experience of life. It indicates a strong mind, great sensibility, and the benevolence that, I believe, always proceeds from it if the mental constitution be a sound one, as it eminently is in Miss Baillie's case. She has a pleasing figure—what we call lady-like—that is, delicate, erect, and graceful; not the large-boned, muscular frame of most Englishwomen. She wears her own gray hair: a general fashion, by-the-way, here, which I wish we elderly ladies of America may have the course and the taste to imitate; and she wears the prettiest of brown silk gowns and bonnets fitting the beau ideal of an old lady: an ideal she might inspire if it has no pre-existence. You would, of course, expect her to be, as she is, free from pedantry and all modes of affectation; but I think you would be surprised to find yourself forgetting, in a domestic and confiding feeling, that you were talking with the woman whose name is best established among