Dorothy Wordsworth describes to Thomas De Quincey how she and her brother William received a letter from him: "Yesterday morning my brother and I walked to Rydale, and he ... sate upon a stump at the foot of the hill while I went up to Ann Nicholson's, and there I found your letter ... I opened the letter in Ann's house just to see if all were well with you, and I then hastened with my prize to William, and sat down beside him to read the letter, and truly a feast it was for us ... "