Transcription
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My dear Kate,
I had expected to return home before this, but am so entangled in engagements that I shall not be able to return before Christmas eve (Friday next). I expect Pierre and Helen will accompany me, and I intend to invite Miss Ulshoeffer & of course Irving Paris to pass Christmas with us. Sanders and Julia and Ogden will of course take their christmas with us. I trust you will have the rooms decorated with greens as usual.
I shall have to return to town again for my New Years dinner and to pass a few days with Mr Astor, after which I hope to settle down again to quiet life at home.
I have been very busy and very dissipated [since] ↑during↓ my sojourn in town; at work all the mornings in the libraries and frolicking in the evenings. I have
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attended every opera. The house is beautiful the troupe very fair and the audience very fashionable. Such beautiful young ladies! but the town is full of them–almost as beautiful as the young lady I saw in my dream at the Cottage.
Julia is slowly getting her house in order; but the upper part and the basement are arranged and we are most comfortably accommodated. The house is the perfection of comfort and convenience–almost equal to the Cottage.
I would write more fully but “the carriage is at the door” so I postpone all news and gossip until I come home–
Give my love to all bodies
Your affectionate Uncle
Washington Irving
New York. Decr 20–1847
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[PAGE 4 BLANK]Transcriber
Marisa CalderioLanguage
EnglishNotes
Washington Irving. Letters. Volume IV, 1846-1859. Aderman, Ralph M., Kleinfield, Herbert L. and Jenifer S. Banks. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982, pp. 158-159.
