as dead to me,--is a
condition that I think makes intercourse (such intercourse as is
possible) less of a pleasure than of a pain; and the thought that so
many lives with which mine was mingled so closely are flowing away
yonder, in vain for me here (and of hereafter who can guess!), prevents
my contentedly embracing my own allotted existence, and keeps me still
with eyes and thoughts averted towards the past, from the path of life I
am appointed to tread. If I could believe it right or kind, or that
those who love me would not be grieved by it, I really feel sometimes as
if I could make up my mind to turn my thoughts once and for all away
from them, as from the very dead, and never more by this disjointed
communion revive, in all its acuteness, the bitter sense of loss and
separation....

You see I discourse of my child's looks; for at present, indeed, I know
of nothing else to discourse about in her. Of her experiences in her
former states of existence she says nothing, though I try her as Shelley
used to do the speechless babies that he met; and her observations upon
the present she also keeps religiously to herself, so that I get no
profit of either her wisdom or her knowledge....

The vast extent of this country offers every variety of climate which an
invalid can require, and its mineral waters afford the same remedies
which are sought after in the famous European baths. God has everywhere
been bountiful, and doubtless no country is without its own special
natural pharmacopaeia, its medicines, vegetable and mineral, and healing
influences for human disease and infirmity. The medicinal waters of this
country are very powerful, and of every variety, and I believe there are
some in Virginia which would precisely answer our purpose....

We are now staying for a short time on the Long Island shore, at a place
called Rockaway. As I sit writing at my window here, the broad, smooth,
blue expanse of the Atlantic stretches out before me, and ships go
sailing by that are coming from, or returning to, the lands where you
live.

You cannot conceive anything more strange, and to me more distasteful
than the life which one leads here. The whole watering-place consists of
a few detached cottages, the property of some individuals who are
singular enough to comprehend the pleasure of privacy; and one enormous
hotel, a huge wooden building, of which we are at present among the
inmates.

How many _can_ sleep under this mammoth