We missed poor Willem so much in arranging all the things; and poor Jäger’s illness was also sad. We gave him a tree in his room. He looks like a shadow, and his voice is quite hoarse.
To two hospitals, the military and the town one, I took presents yesterday, and saw many a scene of suffering and grief. My children are going to give a certain number of poor children a _Bescheerung_ on New Year’s Day. It is so good to teach them early to be generous and kind to the poor. They even wish to give some of their own things, and such as are _not_ broken.
Your many generous presents will find their use at once, and the Christmas pie, etc., be shared by all the family. The remembrances of those bright happy Christmases at Windsor are constantly before me. None will ever be again what those were, without you, dear Papa, and dear kind Grandmama.
* * * I am sure you will have felt under many a circumstance in life, that if any momentary feeling was upon you, and you were writing to some one near and dear, it did you good to put down those feelings on paper, and that, even in the act of doing so, when the words were barely written, the feeling had begun to die away, and the intercourse had done you good.
Although the winter season brought many social duties with it, the Princess’ active personal attention to all those good works and institutions which she had called into existence never flagged. No subject of interest or importance escaped her, and her time was always fully occupied. In April she met the Crown Prince at Gotha, where Prince Louis also came, on his return from Munich, to fetch her. She spent the months of June and July in England with her three little girls, either at Osborne, Windsor, or in London. The return journey to Darmstadt was made by water as far as Mayence. The autumn was spent at Kranichstein, in the neighborhood of which the manœuvres of the Hessian division took place, at some of which the Princess was present.
On the 25th of November, to the great joy of the parents and the country, a son and heir was born--“a splendid boy.” At his christening, on the 28th of December, he received, at the special desire of the Grand Duke, the names Ernst Ludwig--which had been borne by so many of the old Landgraves of Hesse. The sponsors were the Queen of England and the King of Prussia.