o means
of understanding, matters of faith.... Doctrinal points do not seem to
me to avail much here: how much they may signify hereafter, who can
tell? But the daily and hourly discharge of our duties, the purity,
humanity, and activity of our lives, do avail much here; all that we can
add to our own worth and each other's happiness is of evident, palpable,
present avail, and I believe will prove of eternal avail to our souls,
who may carry hence all they have gained in this mortal school to as
much higher, nobler, and happier a sphere as the just judgment of
Almighty God shall after death promote them to....

I have been for the last two days discharging a most vexatious species
of duty--vexatious, to be sure, chiefly from my own fault. We have a
household of six servants, and no housekeeper (such an official being
unknown in these parts); a very abundant vegetable garden, dairy, and
poultry-yard; but I have been very neglectful lately of all domestic
details of supply from these various sources, and the consequences have
been manifold abuses in the kitchen, the pantry, and the store-room;
and disorder and waste, more disgraceful to me, even, than to the people
immediately guilty of them. And I have been reproaching myself, and
reproving others, and heartily regretting that, instead of Italian and
music, I had not learned a little domestic economy, and how much bread,
butter, flour, eggs, milk, sugar, and meat ought to be consumed per week
in a family of eight persons, not born ogres.... I am sorry to find that
my physical courage has been very much shaken by my confinement. Whereas
formerly I scarcely knew the sensation of fear, I have grown almost
cowardly on horseback or in a carriage. I do not think anybody would
ever suspect that to be the case, but I know it in my secret soul, and
am much disgusted with myself in consequence.... Our horses ran away
with the carriage the other day, and broke the traces, and threatened us
with some frightful catastrophe. I had the child with me, and though I
did not lose my wits at all, and neither uttered sound nor gave sign of
my terror, after getting her safely out of the carriage and alighting
myself I shook from head to foot, for the first time in my life, with
fear; and so have only just attained my full womanhood: for what says
Shakespeare?--

"A woman naturally born to fears."

... God bless you, dearest friend.

I am ever yours affect