LoweLL, Oct. 22, 1860
MY GOOD GIRL: You know that I am not a constant
correspondent, but I am now taking your mother's place. You need not feel alarm
about your mother's eyes, as I believe the weakness to be temporary only. At
least she was quite well enough last Friday evening to go with me to the
Prince's Ball1 at Boston. Aunt Harriet went with us; both were much
pleased, as ladies always are, with beautiful dresses, fine music, and a gay
throng. I was obliged to go down to the review of the Military.2 I
suppose you hardly saw the Prince; as a sight you have not lost much. He looks
somewhat like your cousin Hal Read, but is not quite so intelligent in the
face.
Pray do not pain me by hearing that you are homesick. A girl
of good sense like you to be homesick! Never say it. Never feel it, never think
it. The change, the novelty of your situation, will soon wear away, and with
your duties well done, as I know they will be, you will be sustained by the
pride of a well-earned joy in your return. You say the girls, your associates,
seem strange to you. May they not find the same strange appearance in you? You
say you think they do not like you much, and you do not like them much. Is not
this because of the strangeness, and because you do not understand and know
each other. It is one of the objects I desired to gain by sending you to
Georgetown that you should see other manners, other customs and ways, than
those around you at home. However good these may be, the difficulty is that one
used to a single range of thoughts and modes of life soon comes to think all
others inferior, while in fact they may be better, and are only different. This
is a provincialism, and one of which I am sorry to say that Massachusetts
people are most frequently guilty.
By no means give up your own manners simply because others
of your associates are different. Try and see which are best, but do not cling
to your own simply because they are yours. In the matter of pronunciation of
which you wrote, hold fast your own, subject to your teachers. Do not adopt the
flat drawl of the South. That is a patois. Avoid it. All educated people
speak a language alike. T’is true Mr. Clay, said cheer for chair, but
that from a defect of early association. Full, distinct, and clear utterance
with a kindly modulated voice, will add a new accomplishment to a young lady,
who is as perfect as Blanche in the eye of
FATHER
_______________
1 H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, then on a visit
to the United States.
2 General Butler was Brigadier General of the
Massachusetts militia, having received his commission in 1857.
SOURCE: Jessie Ames Marshall, Editor, Private and
Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler During the Period of the
Civil War, Volume 1: April 1860 – June 1862, p. 3-4
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