I am sitting now at the same window where we sat together all that night. How could you think that I would shrink from you ever! You who seem so holy, so pure and noble to me! -- how could I even if you did press my finger to your dear lips? O! there was nothing even then, that you could have done that would not have seemed beautiful and right to me. Ah! those nights! so full of terrible beauty; will they never come again?...O! dear Lawrence I would know you more, and I would have you know me as you never have known me. My soul longs to speak to yours as it never has spoken...I rest in you as I never have rested before; -- you know it, do you not? and I would be everything to you; I would nestle closely in your arms forever, and love you and cling to you and be your 'bird': dear, precious heart!

- Fanny Adams to Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain on January 1, 1852