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Grass Dale
April 17 1851
My dearest Papa,
This very day I have received your letter, Anna's and Emma's and the package all safe. I am delighted with your goodness and generosity but at the same time much touched in my feelings at the affecting tenor of your truly kind epistle. You speak sympathetically of our trials in this struggling Colony but what are they compared to yours. The sense of any thing I may ever have suffered mentally or bodily is lost in the contemplation of what you have endured through a long and anxious pilgrimage in this world of sorrow.
I can guess at your mention of Dorchester! Dorchester! twice repeated though there is no allusion from which to draw the inference that V.C. is perhaps in the same position towards you as some others of your sons-in-law and that there is a backwardness to refund the loan, his expensive habits must make him a dangerous debtor. I am awaiting with as much patience as my very small stock of philosophy will admit of for your reply to our joint letters of December last in which two modes were proposed of our settling with you for the two thousand pounds which you confided to our trust and advanced for our benefit. My great hope is that you may live to see the accomplishment of your views fulfilled in our increasing prosperity. If we decide upon residing at the Northward Grass Dale will be let, it will bring us ninety pounds per annum exclusive of a small farm now let on an improving lease which has two more years to run out, it will then according to the general rate of letting be worth twenty pounds per annum.
This is the way in which the different parts of the Estate will be let. Dwelling house, vineyard with trellised walks etc, fenced paddock, stable with two stalls, loose box, and a fenced stockyard with right of run on the grant for two horses and two cows if required, fifty pounds per annum. Six thousand acres of pasture land from forty to fifty acres of cleared and fenced corn fields, a cottage, four stalled stable and granary, fenced stockyard and stockyard, forty pounds per annum. Kumkedon [?] Spring farm on the back of the grant £20 per annum. This last is the part now occupied on an improving lease. [117] Our residence is well calculated as a pleasurable abode with its extensive garden of six acres for a gentleman and his family.
On the 2nd. of this month as I was musing my thoughts shaped themselves into expression and I wrote you a letter (I was going to use the Scripture illustration substituting the word pen for tongue but checked myself). It is enclosed with this as I had not posted it, no ship sailing at the time. I never received Emma's letter that she speaks of, of course it would not come unless she had paid the postage as regulated by law for ship letters. The Australian notes were enclosed as you directed so that I am quite rich now in pin money. The shoes and boots fit me remarkably well. I am very glad you enclosed them. I will write Anna and Emma shortly and to you again after my return from Champion Bay, till which adieu
Ever
Yours most affectionately
Eliza Brown
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