Daily Dose

From Mrs. Brookfield and Her Circle, edited by Charles and Frances Brookfield

TAKING EXCEPTION

"... it is one of the most painful and absurd ways of the world to assume that one is in affliction for anyone who happens to have been related to us, while intimacies which must have a deeper root from having been sought out for ourselves and made where real sympathy exists, -- these are so soon forgotten, 'only a friend, no relation,' you hear said many times when the words should be reversed into 'only a relation!' Not but that I am very fond of my relations, but there must be exceptions."

From a letter of condolence from Mrs. Brookfield to William Makepeace Thackeray, on the loss of a mutual friend, no relation to either.