%images;]> magbell-03900609 Letter from Mabel Hubbard Bell to Alexander Graham Bell, July 23, with transcript: a machine-readable transcription. The Alexander Graham Bell Collection. Selected and converted. American Memory, Library of Congress.

Washington, DC, 1998.

Preceding element provides place and date of transcription only.

For more information about this text and this American Memory collection, refer to accompanying matter.

The Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Copyright status not determined; refer to accompanying matter.

The National Digital Library Program at the Library of Congress makes digitized historical materials available for education and scholarship.

This transcription is intended to have an accuracy of 99.95 percent or greater and is not intended to reproduce the appearance of the original work. The accompanying images provide a facsimile of this work and represent the appearance of the original.

1998/12/21 0004

Letter from Mrs. Alexander Graham Bell to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. 10 rue Nitot July 23, (1895) My darling Alec:

There's just a chance that this may catch you at Baddeck, so I send it along with a great deal of love and longing for your arrival here. I hope you will understand the telegram. I am going to send today. It is not that I don't want you just as soon as you will come, but I have a purpose in waiting.

I have nothing to tell you. Yesterday I spent mostly in making up my accounts, a most weariful and discouraging occupation. I know I ought to have managed better but I haven't. There is nothing like making up your accounts for giving you a general feeling of failure and incapability. At least this is what I find. I told you my letter of credit ought to buy me all the dresses I wanted and carry me through until September and I did not see how I could need more, but alas the money has gone and I have but one dress to show. I am sorry you haven't got a more capable wife for I do want to manage your affairs so that without stinting you we may have enough to live on and not run into debt. To clear this year without debt will please me more than any fine diamonds you could give me. But I do want Elsie's picture but I fear I can't get that under $3000.00. Is that out of the question? I feel capable of selling some of my jewelry to make up the amount.

Miss Duncan took me through Mrs. Ayers' house this morning. 0005 2 It is a new experience to see things from the back stairs as it were and I did not altogether like it, still I went. The parlors are very magnificent, but I did not see a thing I really coveted and I would not like to be paid to live in the house, it is so stuffy and I am sure the drains are all out of order. They did say that the drains were the cause of the diptheria of Mr. Ayers' grandchild a month ago. I should think so. Mrs. Ayers must be a rather despicable person, yet I feel an odd sort of sympathy with her and recognize traits in her character which I know I have in mine. The older I grow the more I feel how much I owe my mother for her wise care of me and her beautiful example, for in other hands all my worse traits would have come to the surface and I would have been a mean, cruel, heartless woman. But I have had to keep these traits rather below the surface with my mother and with you, my noble husband, before me. I wish I could develop what is best in my own children in the same way, but I am not as strong and fine as Mamma. However both children have innately nobler natures than I. I do love them and am so glad to have had them and now long that you too should have your share of your children Elsie appeals to me constantly more strongly. She is in a way so dependent in spite of her roughness, so gentle, so sensitive and needing protection. Daisy is so much more independent and capable, I can look for help to her where I give it to Elsie. I want you to know them better. Mrs. Mauro says Daisy is a very rare nature, so lovable and loving and utterly unselfish. Goodbye my dear. I hope to see you soon and tell you how much I love you.

Ever yours.

0006 3

By the way please leave orders that Mr. and Miss McCurdy shall have the use of our horses. I don't see why Susie should not have Maude on her side altogether. What do you say.