Beschreibung:

4pp. including stampless address leaf. Autograph Letter Signed (“Mary”). To her sister “Jenney”, Mrs. Albert G. Owen, Big Flats, New York The New York wife of Anson Parmelee, a Vermont clergyman who worked as agent of the American Tract Society, found herself left alone for months on end in a small town east of Atlanta, teaching Bible classes while her husband wandered through the Southern states, distributing bibles and religious tracts. In her solitude, longing to return to the North, she found “kind friends”, including the local Blacks – apparently slaves, but with a degree of freedom - whom she often visited in their homes to “read and talk with them…” At Christmas and New Year’s, “the negroes have a week holiday. The streets were full of them and such singing and shouting and serenading you never heard. Several of them came in to see me after they were equipped for an evening party and it would have amused you to see the white dress trimmed with satin or the showy skally with a wreath of flowers twined about the short [crispy?] locks. Christmas week is their usual time for weddings and many a one has occurred and seeing one of the guests at the gate, we enquired of him, Well, Dick, how did the wedding ‘come off’…, said Dick, Most admirably, and How did the bride look? Most philosophically immediately retorted Dick. At this, we laughed most merrily, Dick all the while enjoying the fun most heartily. Milly, my waiting maid, has given out that she will not marry for beauty or fortune, but goes for love and intelligence. (Her intended knows how to read)