Regarding the end of William Leslie's engagement to Bella Farr. Transcription: has a friend stopping here with her [Mrs. Patten], as a comforter. She is a widow, has been married twice, and went to Caliornia, via Mexico, in 1849, lived in tents, kept a boarding-house ∓c and tells amusing but exaggerated stories of her San Francisco experience. She ?s not at all good-looking though, I think, good-humored, professes to be a Swedenborgian in creed and talks palpable Yankee. Among other things, in conversation with Mrs Church and myself, one evening, she narrated a facetious (!) dialogue betwe
Regarding the end of William Leslie's engagement to Bella Farr. Transcription: has a friend stopping here with her [Mrs. Patten], as a comforter. She is a widow, has been married twice, and went to Caliornia, via Mexico, in 1849, lived in tents, kept a boarding-house ∓c and tells amusing but exaggerated stories of her San Francisco experience. She ?s not at all good-looking though, I think, good-humored, professes to be a Swedenborgian in creed and talks palpable Yankee. Among other things, in conversation with Mrs Church and myself, one evening, she narrated a facetious (!) dialogue between herself and her mother, an old woman of seventy, in which she had rallied her parent about how she ?d look in her coffin, told her she shouldn ?t let a good, new night-gown be wasted on her corpse, with much more of the same delightful jocularity! This is a bit of Yankee nature I have noticed heretofore ? the absence of all feeling of the sacredness of death or parentage. I dare say this woman is a good average daughter, but jesting on such a subject argues a coarseness of nature which is ? thoroughly American! / [William] Leslie ?s engagement with Miss Bella Farr has snapt ? perhaps permanently. Cause a spice of jealousy on his part and an indefinite conviction that she didn ?t manifest enough fondness for him! He told her this, suggesting they ?d better postpone matrimony till spring &c and subsequently wrote her a letter which made a break-off optional. Now he begins to calculate on getting his presents ? pretty valuable ones ? returned! This is his account. They may splice matters again. I suppose the girl knowing she has money and other admirers, not knowing much Title: Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries: Volume 9, page 180, August 12, 1858 . 12 August 1858. Gunn, Thomas Butler, 1826-1903
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