“Covered with pellucid horn,
     To save from fingers wet the letters fair.”

The horn, alas! is no longer pellucid, but dim, as if with the tears of the many generations that have struggled through the alphabet and the first ten numerals and reached in due course the haven of the Lord’s Prayer and Doxology.  I had passed the Doxology, and was already deep in the “Pilgrim’s Progress” and the “Holy War” (which latter book, with the rude taste of childhood, I greatly preferred, so that I quickly knew the mottoes and standards of its bewildering hosts by heart), when my father’s first letter came home.  In those days, before the great canal was cut, a voyage to the East Indies was no light matter, lying as it did around the treacherous Cape and through seas where a ship may lie becalmed for weeks.  So it was little wonder that my father’s letter, written from Bombay, was some time on its way.  Still, when the news came it was good.  He had seen Mr. Elihu Sanderson, son of the Elihu mentioned in my grandfather’s Will, had presented his parchment and Testament, and received some notes (most of which he sent home), together with a sealed packet, directed in Amos Trenoweth’s handwriting:  “To the Son of my House, who, having Counted all the Perils, is Resolute.”  This packet, my father went on to say, contained much mysterious matter, which would keep until he and his dear wife met.  He added that, for himself, he could divine no peril, nor any cause for his dear wife to trouble, seeing that he had but to go to the island of Ceylon, whence, having accomplished the commands contained in the packet, he purposed to take ship and return with all speed to England.  This was the substance of the letter, wrapped around with many endearing words, and much tender solicitude for Margery and the little one, as that he hoped Jasper was tackling his letters like a real scholar, and comforting his mother’s heart, with more to this effect; which made us weep very sorrowfully when the letter was read, although we could not well have told why.  As to the sealed packet, my father would have been doubtless more explicit had he been without a certain distrust of letters and letter-carriers, which, amid much faith in the miraculous powers of the Post Office, I have known to exist among us even in these later days.

Than this blessed letter surely no written sheet was ever more read and re-read; read to me every night before prayers were said, read to Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Loveday, read (in extracts) to all the neighbours of Polkimbra, for none knew certainly why Ezekiel had gone to India except that, somewhat vaguely, it was to “better hisself.”  How many times my mother read it, and kissed it, and cried over it, God alone knows; I only know that her step, which had been failing of late, grew firmer, and she went about the house with a light in her face like “the face of an angel,” as the vicar said.  It may have been:  I have never since seen its like upon earth.