Correspondence (incoming): Fa - Fl, 1892-1896

for the beneficent influence that has meant so much to me. Beautiful as these University buildings are, they are nothing compared to the character building that is all the time going on within their walls.

I thank God that devotion, and self-denial, and faithfulness to high ideals are contagious, and that they flourish in the atmosphere of Stanford University.

Gratefully yours, Belle Fielder President of Roble

Asheville N.C. Feb 3rd / 92

Mrs. Leland Stanford My Dear sister in affliction

In the Ladies Home Journal of Feb. 1892 I find a sketch of your charmed circle more charming work, and most charming facial expression, but more than all to me, is the sad, and awful coinciden[ce] of our two lives; Here it is in brief

Eighteen years married, when God in his wisdom, saw fit to send us ofsping [sic] gives a son. "the idol of their hearts - and hopes, and self was forgotten in the noble lad that grew beside them After sixteen years of sweet companinship [sic] the youthful life was closed; He was take[n] with low fever and died" Eternal, dreamless, silence, vanished from mortal sight forever, how awful!

I was married in September. 1856

and in May 1874 a child was born dead,in 1877 another daughter came to glorify our humble home; she was healthy, bright, beautiful, earnest, confiding, and my constant companion, opening like a rose bud - as time went on, and character was established. I spared no pains or trouble to have her fully developed, as nearly to her "bent" as - possible, music, elocution and architectural drawings seemed most relished in her studies.

She was sympathetic, and liberal to a fault, she worshiped God, firmly believing that through Christ we are saved; next her family, and the world, knowing that all are God's she was as the young shoot from the bulb that grew one of natures purest designs, -sapping its new life from the old decaying root, that was yielding up to its very existence

to succor the new growth.

At twelve years and six months she, also died, of a low fever; we did not anticipate her death, she was so cheerful having just expressed a wish to transfer her knowledge to a girl in waiting, who could not read a letter, she fell asleep never to wake, died of heart failure.

her last words were, Mama don't leave me, nor forget to change the water on my flowers.

Pulsless [sic], dreamless, dead. My once beautiful child, answers no call from me, my cries are vain. I kneel at the simple slab to read her name once more. My anxious ears have heard no whisper through the darkness of seperation [sic] no sound of spirit foot falls. -- a veil hangs there! silence! Oh! eternal silence!

Aside from maternal joys, never -

dying grief, - and a few minor acceptions [sic] our lives are two extremes.

Wealth, and luxury, are unknown to me, accept [sic] in book form, but when life shall end, we will vanish under the same shadow of death. O! dreary region of the dead!

I will enclose a letter from her teacher, while living in Atlanta Georgia, that you may know, I am not an imposter but one who feels overwhelmed, crushed, with the loss of all that was precious, in my declining years.

Very sincerely yours in sympathy. Mrs. Mary I, Fitch

P.S. Your son was eight years Bessie's sr. " You are nine "[years] my "[sr.]