Peering at their letters kept behind glass at the special exhibit at the Morgan, I couldn't help but marvel at the Austen sisters' precise penmanship. So straight, so lacking in errors! To conserve paper, they even often continued their thoughts by turning a finished page and writing horizontally across their own words. And what devotion there was between them, recorded and tangible forever in a way that I doubt emails and text messages will be.
What struck me most, though, was this sentence from the letter Cassandra wrote to her niece Fanny about Jane's death, for it sounds so much like what I feel for my own beloved confidante:
"I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed. She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow; I had not a thought concealed from her, and it is as if I had lost a part of myself."
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