Reproduced by courtesy of the
Written on personalized stationary. Stationary reads
Our aim in this edition has been to transcribe the content of the letters as accurately as possible without reproducing the physical appearance of the manuscript. Craik’s spelling, punctuation, underlining, superscripts, abbreviations, additions and deletions are retained, except for words which are hyphenated at the end of a line, which we have silently emended. Where Craik uses a non-standard spelling, we have encoded both her spelling and the standard Oxford English Dictionary spelling to facilitate searching. The long s is not encoded.
I send the autographs you ask for – but there is no photograph attainable.
I return this most heart-breaking column of newspaper print. – Many a time I have
wondered if you had ever found your child – & I still believe you may find
him. – He was too old quite to forget those first six years – & if when he
grows up he hears the story, he may recognize it as his own, & come to you.
– Unless he is dead – & then he is safe in God's keeping. – But I can never
think of your anguish without the wonder that you bore it & lived. – I still
hope you will live to be happy – but God only knows. In the meantime you have
your other children. My
The stories about it. –
With deepest sympathy – & glad I can give you even a small pleasure, believe me