stracted about it, and it is well for you that I have no more
space to write on this theme.

God bless you, my dear friend. Pray, as I do, for the end of this
evil....

F. A. B.

BUTLER'S ISLAND, GEORGIA, February 8th, 1839.

Your letter of the 10th of November, my dear Lady Dacre, fulfilled its
kindly mission without the delay at Butler Place, the anticipation of
which did not prevent your making the benevolent effort of writing it.
It reached me in safety here, in the very hindermost skirts of
civilization, recalling with so much vividness scenes and people so
remote and so different from those that now surround me, that it would
have been a sad letter to me, even had it not contained the news of Mrs.
Sullivan's illness. At any time any suffering of yours would have
excited my sincere sympathy; but that your anxiety and distress should
spring from such a cause, I can the more readily deplore, from my
knowledge of your daughter, which, though too slight for my own
gratification, was sufficient to make me aware of her many excellent and
admirable qualities. In those books of hers, too, "Tales of a Chaperon,"
and "Tales of the Peerage and the Peasantry," which since my return to
America I have re-read with increased interest, her mind and character
reveal themselves very charmingly; and I know those in this remote
"other world," as doubtless there are many in England, who, without
enjoying my privilege of personal acquaintance with her, would be
fellow-mourners with you should any evil befall her. But I shall not
admit this apprehension, and I entreat you, my dear Lady Dacre, to add
one more to the many kindnesses you have bestowed on me, by letting me
know how it fares with your daughter. In the mean time, if she is well
enough to receive my greeting, pray remember me most kindly to her, and
tell her that from the half-savage banks of the Altamaha, those earnest
wishes, which are unspoken prayers, ascend to heaven for her recovery.

You ask after my children.... I am in no hurry to begin
_educationeering_; indeed, as regards early instruction, I am a little
behind the fervent zeal of the age, having considerably more regard for
what may be found in, than what may be put into, a human head; and a
more earnest desire that my child should think, even than that she
should learn; and I want her to make her own wisdom, rather than t