Dear Lizzie,
It strikes me we might be a little more sisterly in the way of corresponding and yet I know it takes a good deal of time to write letters and you especially have very little to spare with your little family and your letters to Otis. For my own part, I don’t know but it is as much laziness as anything else that keeps me from writing for I have been intending to send you my love and congratulations ever since the deal little baby came. But you have them now and will you please kiss the little fellow for his Auntie. I want very much to see him. I wish it wasn’t such a journey between Augusta and Farmington – and such an almost impossible journey with little children. I do wish you could come up and bring all four of them this summer. Is it quite out of the question? I should so love to have you. […]
Mary Ellen Patten [Ella] to her sister-in-law Elizabeth Ann Waite [Oliver Otis Howard Papers]