Your brother is almost the only one of his sex I know, who has the tenderness of woman with the spirit and firmness of man:  a circumstance which strikes every woman who converses with him, and which contributes to make him the favorite he is amongst us.  Foolish women who cannot distinguish characters may possibly give the preference to a coxcomb; but I will venture to say, no woman of sense was ever much acquainted with Colonel Rivers without feeling for him an affection of some kind or other.

A propos to women, the estimable part of us are divided into two classes only, the tender and the lively.

The former, at the head of which I place Emily, are infinitely more capable of happiness; but, to counterbalance this advantage, they are also capable of misery in the same degree.  We of the other class, who feel less keenly, are perhaps upon the whole as happy, at least I would fain think so.

For example, if Emily and I marry our present lovers, she will certainly be more exquisitely happy than I shall; but if they should change their minds, or any accident prevent our coming together, I am inclined to fancy my situation would be much the most agreable.

I should pout a month, and then look about for another lover; whilst the tender Emily would

 “Sit like patience on a monument,”

and pine herself into a consumption.

Adieu!  They wait for me.

        Yours,
          A. Fermor.

Tuesday, midnight.

We have had a very agreable day, Lucy, a pretty enough kind of a ball, and every body in good humor:  I danced with Fitzgerald, whom I never knew so agreable.

Happy love is gay, I find; Emily is all sprightliness, your brother’s eyes have never left her one moment, and her blushes seemed to shew her sense of the distinction; I never knew her look so handsome as this day.

Do you know I felt for Madame Des Roches?  Emily was excessively complaisant to her:  she returned her civility, but I could perceive a kind of constraint in her manner, very different from the ease of her behaviour when we saw her before:  she felt the attention of Rivers to Emily very strongly:  in short, the ladies seemed to have changed characters for the day.

We supped with your brother on our return, and from his windows, which look on the river St. Charles, had the pleasure of observing one of the most beautiful objects imaginable, which I never remember to have seen before this evening.

You are to observe the winter method of fishing here, is to break openings like small fish ponds on the ice, to which the fish coming for air, are taken in prodigious quantities on the surface.

To shelter themselves from the excessive cold of the night, the fishermen build small houses of ice on the river, which are arranged in a semicircular form, and extend near a quarter of a mile, and which, from the blazing fires within, have a brilliant transparency and vivid lustre, not easy either to imagine or to describe:  the starry semicircle looks like an immense crescent of diamonds, on which the sun darts his meridian rays.