After I leave Cambridge my address for a week or two will be Dent near Kendal
Cambridge Oct 7 [1847]
My dear Mary
Many letters require speedy answers so in the first place I acknowledge your Mamma's kind note and send her my thanks for it. If an honest man be the noblest work of God, why should not an honest woman be put on as high a pinnacle of glory? I ment to write to you a letter of congratulation to reach you on the 13th, your birthday. But after the 10th I shall be on the wing for several days and have perhaps no time for writing. It is therefore best for me now to write to you tho' I am up to the ears in Examination papers; and [verily?] out of temper having not yet received one of my Norwich boxes which contained the whole series of my Welsh Geological Journals and ought to have come on Monday. My servant is going off to town to look for it and as soon as I am at liberty I shall come back to Norwich should the stray box not have come. But I beg your pardon for [bothering?] you with my own private troubles. On the 13th your Mamma will give you from me a small remembrance of your Norwich visit, wear it for my sake and accept my heart's best wishes with it. May your life be a life of happiness and may every step you take be a step nearer to heaven! May the blessings of health and romantic love be your [?] [?] [?] I trust that you will have many happy years after the writer of this note is under the sod and that you will continue to think kindly of one who loved your Father and Mother and loved you as a friend - tho' he is now jogging on in the season of the [?] and [leaf?] while you are [?] away the verdant blossom of early Spring. I do not mean to be poetical but plain truth you know is sometimes good poetry - therefore plain words honestly spoken. May God bless you and make you happy! Give my kind regards to your Father and Mother and believe me
Ever your affectionate friend
A Sedgewick
P.S. Isabella is here and we leave Cambridge for Yorkshire at the end of the week. Did she know that I was writing to you I am sure she would send her love.
N.B. You must shut this note up and read it on the morning of the 13th - which will do as well, you may put on the [?] of [it's time?] a day or two and appear you [?] it on the 13th
