hear that the people where your lot is cast for the present are sensible and reasonable on that exciting subject.  I entreat you to be prudent in your remarks and not attempt to ‘niggerize’ the good old Friends about you.  Above all, let them know that you are about the only Abolitionist in this vicinity.”  This severe letter does not seem to have affected her very deeply for, on the next day after receiving it, she writes her parents:  “Since school to-day I have had the unspeakable satisfaction of visiting four colored people and drinking tea with them.  Their name is Turpin, and Theodore Wright of New York is their stepfather.  To show this kind of people respect in this heathen land affords me a double pleasure.”  Mr. McLean evidently did not believe in woman preachers, for the radical Susan writes him: 

I attended Rose street meeting in New York and heard the strongest sermon on “The Vices of the City,” that has been preached in that house very lately.  It was from Rachel Barker, of Dutchess county.  I guess if you could hear her you would believe in a woman’s preaching.  What an absurd notion that women have not intellectual and moral faculties sufficient for anything but domestic concerns!

She does not hesitate to write to an uncle, Albert Dickinson, and reprove him for drinking ale and wine at Yearly Meeting time.  It seems that then, as now, girls had a habit of writing on the first page of a sheet, next on the third, then vertically on a page, etc.  Uncle Albert retorts: 

Thy aunt Ann Eliza says to tell thee we are temperate drinkers and hope to remain so.  We should think from the shape of thy letter that thou thyself hadst had a good horn from the contents of the cider barrel, a part being written one side up and a part the other way, and it would need some one in nearly the same predicament to keep track of it.  We hope thy cranium will get straightened when the answer to this is penned, so that we may follow thy varied thoughts with less trouble.  A little advice perhaps would be good on both sides, and they that give should be willing to receive.  See to it that thou payest me down for this.

This letter also gives an insight into the medical practice of the good old times.  A niece, Cynthia, is being treated for the dropsy by “drinking copiously of a decoction made by charring wormwood in a close vessel and putting the ashes into brandy, and every night being subjected to a heavy sweat.”  It recommends plenty of blue pills and boneset for the ague.  Later, Susan writes of a friend who is “under the care of both Botanical and Apothecary doctors.”  For hardening of wax in the ear she sends an infallible prescription:  “Moisten salt with vinegar and drop it in the ear every night for six weeks; said to be a certain cure.”

The staid and puritanical young woman is much disturbed at the enthusiastic reception given President Van Buren at New Rochelle, and writes home: