for it, he shall
be welcome to it....

I beg you will not call this a scrap of a letter, because it is all
written upon one sheet: if you do, I shall certainly call yours a letter
of scraps, being written on several; and am ever,

Very truly yours,
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, October 19th, 1839.
DEAREST HARRIET,

I have just been reading over a letter of yours written from Schwalbach,
in August; and in answer to some speculation of mine, which I have
forgotten, you say, "Our birth truly is no less strange than our death.
The beginning--and whence come we? The end--and whither go we?" Now, I
presume that you did not intend that I should apply myself to answer
these questions categorically. You must have thought you were speaking
to me, dearest Harriet, and have only written down the vague cogitations
that rose in the shape of queries to your lips, as you read my letter,
which suggested them; opening at the same time, doubtless, a pair of
most _intensely sightless_ eyes, upon the gaming-table of the Cursaal,
if it happened to be within range of vision.

For myself, the older I grow the less I feel strength or inclination to
speculate. The daily and hourly duties of life are so indifferently
fulfilled by me, that I feel almost rebuked if my mind wanders either to
the far past or future while the present, wherein lies my salvation, is
comparatively unthought of. To tell you the truth, I find in the daily
obligations to do and to suffer which come to my hands, a refuge from
the mystery and uncertainty which veil all before and after life.

For indeed, when the mind sinks bewildered under speculations as to our
former fate or future destinies, the sense of things _to be done_, of
duties to be fulfilled, even the most apparently trivial in the world,
is an unspeakable relief; and though the whole of this existence of
ours, material and spiritual, affords but this _one_ foothold (and it
sometimes seems so to me), it is enough that every hour brings work; and
more than enough--_all_--if that work be but well done.

Thus the beginning and the end trouble me seldom; but the difficulty of
dealing rightly with what is immediately before and around me does
trouble me infinitely; but that trouble is neither uncertainty nor
doubt.

Our possible separation hereafter from those we have loved here, is