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Cattle Chosen
Feb 20th 1836
Yesterday afternoon my dearest Capel the Sally Anne entered our bay and amidst the variety of pursuits and the new faces which her arrival brought amongst us, I have only succeeded in mastering the contents of your precious letters within the last two hours.
None of your packages have come down by the Sally Anne but the Fanny is hourly expected with the whole of your valuable cargo. I scarcely know how to thank you for us all as you deserve my own best Capel for all your exertions for us and the beautiful exactitude with which you execute commissions or rather anticipate them. By the Fanny we shall write again and shall then be able to notice everything more satisfactorily.
And now I must notice but briefly the severe afflictions with which it has pleased Providence to visit our beloved friends at Ballard Lodge. They need not me to point out where consolation alone can be found in such an hour of trial. I always feel it is so cruel to dwell upon the losses which however new to us have been softened by the lapse of time and the blessed effects of religion to those on whom the stroke has fallen.  To my dear Mother this has been a sudden and unexpected blow, and by us who knew but little of him and yet so enough to love his name most tenderly his loss is felt as the loss of an affectionate relative. And poor Uncle Geroge too! it is sad indeed to find one's early friends and connections thus dropping round us. It makes one look almost with impatience to the time when we may too "depart in peace".
Oh Capel it is a fearful thing to glance one's eye down the page of an English letter and to shudder as each dear name meets the eye, hardly knowing by what distressing intelligence it may be succeeded. But why do I dwell upon feeling my dear friends which your own hearts have already understood. When there are still so many spared us for a meeting even in this world. I am wrong in encouraging the melancholy which cannot always be suppressed. 
You will be pleased to hear that we are all quite well and delighted with Cattle Chosen. It is indeed a sweet place and improvements are daily springing up around us but there is so much to do that to an English eye we still should appear sadly unsettled. The house which we now occupy would strike at a distance as a comfortable substantial looking mansion. It is white and the four upper windows in the upper story