s
very much tired by the expedition: to be sure I am not a good walker,
riding being my _natural_ exercise, in which I persist, in spite of
stumbling and shying horses, high-roads three feet deep in dust, and
by-roads three feet deep in mud, at one and the same time. Taking
exercise has become, instead of a pleasure, a sometimes rather irksome
duty to me; a lonely ride upon a disagreeable horse not being a great
enjoyment; but I know that my health has its reward, and I persevere....

The death of an elderly lady puts us in possession of our property,
which she had held in trust during her life.... Increase of fortune
brings necessarily increased responsibility and occupation, and for that
I am not sorry, though the circumstance of the death of this relation,
of whom I knew and had seen but little, has been fruitful in
disappointments to me.... In the first place, I have been obliged to
forego a visit from my delightful friend, Miss Sedgwick, who was coming
to spend some time with me; this, in my lonely life, is a real
privation. In the next place, our proposed voyage to England is
indefinitely postponed, and from a thing so near as to be reckoned a
certainty (for we were to have sailed the 20th of next month), it has
withdrawn itself into the misty regions of a remote futurity, of the
possible events of which we cannot even guess....

We have had a most unprecedented winter; the cold has been dreadful, and
the snow, even now, in some places, lies in drifts from three to five
feet deep. There is no spring here; the winter is with us to-day, and
to-morrow the heat will be oppressive; and in a week everything will be
like summer, without the full-fledged foliage to temper the glare.

I have taken up your letter to see if there are any positive questions
in it, that I may not this time be guilty of not replying to you while I
answer it....

I do not give up my music quite, but generally, after dinner, pass an
hour at the piano, not so much from the pleasure it now gives me, as
from the conviction that it is wrong to give up even the smallest of
our resources; and also because, as wise Goethe says, "We are too apt to
suffer the mean things of life to overgrow the finer nature within us,
therefore it is expedient that at least once a day we read a little
poetry, or sing a song, or look at a picture." Upon this principle, I
still continue to play and sing sometimes, but no longer with any great
pleasure to myself.

Good