you may make it answer
its best ends.

These seem almost cold-hearted words, and yet God knows from how warm a
heart, full of love and aching with sympathy, I write them! But sorrow
is His angel, His minister, His messenger who does His will, waiting
upon our souls with blessed influences. My only consolation, in thinking
upon your affliction, is to remember that all events are ordered by our
Father, and to reflect, as I often do----

I had written thus far, dearest Harriet, when a miserable letter from
Georgia came to interrupt me. How earnestly, in the midst of the tears
through which I read it, I had to recall those very thoughts, in my own
behalf, which I was just urging upon you, you can imagine....

We may not choose our own discipline; but happy are they who are called
to suffer themselves, rather than to see those they love do so!...

My head aches, and my eyes ache, and my heart aches, and I cannot muster
courage to write any more. God bless you, my dearest Harriet. Remember
me most affectionately to dear Dorothy, and

Believe me ever yours,
F. A. B.

[Dr. Charles Follen, known in his own country as Carl Follenius,
became an exile from it for the sake of his political convictions,
which in his youth he had advocated with a passionate fervor that
made him, even in his college days, obnoxious to its governing
authorities. He wrote some fine spirited Volkslieder that the
students approved of more than the masters; and was so conspicuous
in the vanguard of liberal opinion, that the Vaterland became an
unwholesome residence for him, and he emigrated to America, where
all his aspirations towards enlightened freedom found "elbow-room."

He became an ordained Unitarian preacher; and it was a striking
tribute to his spirit of humane tolerance as well as to his eloquent
advocacy of his own high spiritual faith, that he was once earnestly
and respectfully solicited to give a series of discourses upon
Christianity, to a society of intelligent men who professed
themselves dis-believers in it (atheists, materialists, for aught I
know), inasmuch as from him they felt sure of a powerful, clear, and
earnest exposition of his own opinions, unalloyed by uttered or
implied condemnation of them for differing from him. I do not know
whether Dr. Follen complie