and leave it, that I cannot bear to think of any possible failure of her
precious gift from over-exertion.... I think, begging your pardon, you
talk some nonsense when you compare your existence, as an object of
rational pity, with my sister's. All other considerations set apart,
there are certain conditions of life, which are the result of peculiar
states and stages of society, that are indisputably less favorable for
the production of happiness, and the exercise of goodness also, than
others. Among these results of over-civilization are the careers of
public exhibitors of every description. In judging of their conduct or
character, we may make every allowance for the peculiar dangers of their
position, and the temptations of their peculiar gifts; but I confess I
am amazed at any woman who, sheltered by the sacred privacy of a home,
can envy the one or desire the other.

Dearest Harriet, this letter has lain so long unfinished, and I am now
so engulfed in all sorts of worry, flurry, hurry, row, fuss, bustle,
bother, dissipation and distraction, that it is vain hoping to add
anything intelligible to it. Good-bye, dearest.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, May 29th, 1842.
DEAREST HARRIET,

This is Sunday, and, owing to my custom of neither paying visits nor
going to dinner or evening parties on "the first day of the week," I
look forward to a little leisure; though the repeated raps at the door
already this morning remind me that it will probably be interrupted
often enough to render it of little avail for any purpose of consecutive
occupation....

You ask me if I think of "taking to translating." My dear Harriet, if
you mean when I return to America, I shall take to nothing there but the
stagnant life I led there before, which, in the total absence of any
impulse from the external circumstances in which I live and the utter
absence of any interest in any intellectual pursuit in those with whom I
live, becomes absolutely inevitable; and so I think that, once again in
my Transatlantic home, I shall neither originate nor translate anything.

I have "taken to translating" "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle" because my
bill at Mademoiselle Devy's is L97, and I am determined _my brains_
shall pay it; therefore, also, I have given my father a ballet on the
subject of Pocahontas, and am p