[Letter from Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to her sister, Ann Upshur Eyre, September 20, 1813]

My dear sister

At the appointed time we arrived at home, when I was shocked and surprised to hear that Mr. Teackle had but just begun to recover from a serious bilious attack which seized him a few days after I left home. He has not yet been out of the house, but is in a fair way to recover. He was evidently delighted to see me and his spirits have been good ever since I came home. Poor fellow, he longs for some of your figs, and is always talking about them. But, you know, it would be impossible to get any of them here fit to eat, after transportation.

I, as usual, was fatigued abundantly with my ride, and to mend the matter at the ferry, I was near knocking off my head, by a slip of my foot in getting into the carriage after it had a been put in the boat. My chin and jawbone struck the iron of the step, then my breast bone, or rather my corset bone took a part of the blow in slipping, and broke into two pieces, so that on the whole my chin was swell’d to the size of a hen’s egg in a minute and a bone broken. Altogether making a broken voyage of it. My chin is black and blue yet, and as to the corsette bone, it will never be the better.

Our Septe^r court is sitting now, and

the town is full of military, two recruiting offices being here; so that altogether we have quite a splutter in our city. The drums, fifes, marching, and counter-marching of the military, not a little coincides with the hum drum and drum headed, and noisy gentlemen of the civil list who now are just as busy in their marching counter marching and attacks on their opponents, their poor clients, as the soldiers shou’d be going against the British. For after all, the client of a lawyer is generally the only party he attacks with success and therefore I say a lawyer’s client is his opponent.

Major Martin call’d yesterday even^g. He is full of anecdotes about the enemy, and Annapolis, and St. Michaels and gallantry. Yes, he is chuck full of gallantry. Paid me some violent compliments, to none of which I gave credit, and I gave him in change, as many more, to be taken as best suited his appetite. After all he is an elegant fellow. It is a pity that common sense will give the C_____e to two thirds an elegant fellow says to a woman turn’d of thirty! And I have often thought what a deal of titillation we women of mind are obliged to be unmove’d with, from the disagreeable circumstance of possessing that old fashon’d commodity call’d common sense.

Query — is it not better to be a fool?

I deliver'd your letter to Miss Gunter, and also sent you the book with your joining lace, which some of us, unintentually purloin'd. I think your cap was pretty, not superb, very pretty indeed.

How goes everything with you now? Is sir Knight as smiling as ever? We had a most diverting controversy respecting his and Mr. Nivison's comparative merits the even^g we arriv’d at Tink a Tink. When Sir Knight had more champions than one trusty squire. The beauty of it was that all who were in favor [of] Sir Abel had never seen Mr N. but [his] reputation often outstrips his personal movements. So that Mr. N. was canvass’d with as much confidence, and as little ceremony as if he had been an every day body with us, or as a new poem wou’d be of Walter Scott's, by the reviewers; oh those sapient, all-sufficient criticks who never read a book at all, but give their opinions from hearsay. Amongst other things it was asserted that Mr Nivison’s white forehead was the consequence of his wearing a veil. Another said he did not look like a man. The objected his hipps and I asked Eliza if she had never heard that he conceited he was a piano once, and went about the streets playing upon his toes