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Collins, Wilkie, 1824-1889

"No Name"


"When breakfast-time came (on Thursday morning), we were surprised to
find a strange letter on the table. Perhaps I ought to mention it to
you, in case of any future necessity for your interference. It was
addressed to Miss Garth, on paper with the deepest mourning-border round
it; and the writer was the same man who followed us on our way home from
a walk one day last spring--Captain Wragge. His object appears to be to
assert once more his audacious claim to a family connection with my poor
mother, under cover of a letter of condolence; which it is an
insolence in such a person to have written at all. He expresses as much
sympathy--on his discovery of our affliction in the newspaper--as if he
had been really intimate with us; and he begs to know, in a postscript
(being evidently in total ignorance of all that has really happened),
whether it is thought desirable that he should be present, among the
other relatives, at the reading of the will! The address he gives, at
which letters will reach him for the next fortnight, is, 'Post-office,
Birmingham.' This is all I have to tell you on the subject. Both the
letter and the writer seem to me to be equally unworthy of the slightest
notice, on our part or on yours.


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