MY DEAREST ANNIE,

     I snatch a moment from my studies to write to your dear, dear, little self. I need scarcely say that the principal inducement I have to work is my desire of getting my studies finished so as to be able to press your dear little form in my arms.
     With best, best love, believe me, dearest Annie, your own,

 "WILLIAM."

.......... She was a clever, amiable, accomplished, and lovable girl, having, moreover a clear income of £200 a-year; her mother gave her besides a present of £700.
          Many speak of her almost with affection, and the poor of Rugeley still deplore the loss of a most sympathising benefactress. With such a wife, one would have thought that William Palmer would have lived in contented obscurity in his snug two-storeyed cottage, standing a little off the street, with its three square windows above, and one on either side on either side of the door.

      More than twenty years since a retired Indian officer pitched his tent at Stafford, with a low vulgar woman, who was at once his housekeeper and mistress. He was a Lieutenant-Colonel, and his name was Brooks. The name of the housekeeper was Mary Thornton, and she it seems was subject to wild fits of ungovernable passion. The old Colonel, evidently a man of feeble mind though strong appetites, would flee from her anger to a neighbouring tavern, and there seek refuge till the storm had blown over. Not infrequently, however, she would track him to his retreat, and drag him home in ignominious triumph, Indeed, as it was naively remarked in the neighbourhood, " he might as well have been married." One night the old colonel was found lying dead upon the floor - a recently discharged pistol by his side. This was in 1834. By a will dated July 27, 1833, he bequeathed to Anne Thornton, the illegitimate offspring of his liaison with with his housekeeper, nine houses at Stafford besides land, and the interest of 20,000 sicca rupees, for herself and her children; and appointed Dr. Edward Knight, a highly-respectable physician of Stafford, and Mr. Dawson, her guardians and trustees. To Mary Thornton, the mother of Anne, the Colonel bequeathed certain property, which was to pass to the daughter at the decease of the mother.
     Anne Thornton is reported to have been painfully sensible of her own false position as an illegitimate child, and it is said that she was habituated to look upon herself as an outcast - being of an inferior order - one who should be deeply grateful to any man who would bestow his name upon a creature unrecognised by the laws, and tainted from her birth. Her first love was unpropitious. But fountains of that great deep, a woman's heart, had been broken up. The ark of her existence now drifted to and fro, reckless at the helm, and hope in the hold, until the waters of disappointment decreased, and the keel grated on the strand. Her mountain of Ararat was William Palmer.