ake
that of any one else (my own wise self not excepted). For fear, however,
that you should imagine that I mean to let her grow up "savage," I beg
to state that she does know her letters, a study which she prosecutes
with me for about a quarter of an hour daily, out of "Mother Goose's
Nursery Rhymes." I have thought myself to blame, perhaps, for choosing a
_work of imagination_ for that elementary study; but the child, like a
rational creature, abhors the whole thing most cordially, and when I
think what wondrous revelations are flowing to her hourly through those
five gates of knowledge, her senses, I am not surprised that she
despises and detests the inanimate dead letter of mere bookish lore....

My poor mother's death, which roused me most painfully to the perception
of the distance which divides me from all my early friends, has filled
my mind with the gloomiest forebodings respecting my father, and my
sister's unprotected situation, should anything befall him. The passing
away of my kindred, and those who are dear to me, while I, removed to an
impassable distance, only hear of their death after a considerable lapse
of time, without the consolation of being near them, or even the
preparation of hearing they were ill, is a circumstance of inexpressible
sadness....

If Macready would give me anything for my play, I would come over, if
only for a month, and see my father, whose image in sickness and
depression haunts me constantly....

F. A. B.

BUTLER'S ISLAND, February 10th, 1839.

It is only two days, I believe, dearest Harriet, since I finished a long
letter to you, but I am yet in your debt by one dated the 30th of
November, and being in the mind to pay my owings, I proceed to do so, as
honestly as I may....

I have just been hearing a long and painful discussion upon the subject
of slavery; a frequent theme, as you will easily believe, of thought and
conversation with us, now that we are living in the midst of it; and I
am assured, by those who maintain the justice of the practice of holding
slaves, that had it been otherwise than right, Christ would have
forbidden it. It is vain that I say that Christ has done so by
implication, forbidding us to do otherwise than we would be done by: I
am told in reply, that neither Christ nor his disciples having ever
denounced slavery by name as unjust, or wrong, is suffi