Thank you so much for the flannel for the Dorcas Society and also for the gingham. I quite agree with you that it is nonsense their wanting to wear pretty things, but everybody is so Radical and
irreligious nowadays, that it is difficult to make them see that
they should not try and dress like the upper classes. I am sure I
don't know what we are coming to. As papa has often said in his
sermons, we live in an age of unbelief.
'We have had great fun over a clock that an unknown admirer
sent papa last Thursday. It arrived in a wooden box from London,
carriage paid; and papa feels it must have been sent by some one who
had read his remarkable sermon, 'Is License Liberty?' for on the top
of the clock was a figure of a woman, with what papa said was the
cap of Liberty on her head. I didn't think it very becoming myself,
but papa said it was historical, so I suppose it is all right.
Parker unpacked it, and papa put it on the mantelpiece in the
library, and we were all sitting there on Friday morning, when just
as the clock struck twelve, we heard a whirring noise, a little puff
of smoke came from the pedestal of the figure, and the goddess of
Liberty fell off and broke her nose on the fender! Maria was quite
alarmed, but it looked so ridiculous, that James and I went off into
