ogether; meals ate, and walks taken, together,--and
conferences, how we may best do good to this poor person or that, and
wean our spirits from the world's _cares_, without divesting
ourselves of its _charities_. What a picture I have drawn, Maria! and
none of all these things may ever come to pass."

FROM ANOTHER LETTER.

"----Continue to write to me, my sweet cousin. Many good thoughts,
resolutions, and proper views of things, pass through the mind in the
course of the day, but are lost for want of committing them to paper.
Seize them, Maria, as they pass, these Birds of Paradise, that show
themselves and are gone,--and make a grateful present of the precious
fugitives to your friend.

"To use a homely illustration, just rising in my fancy,--shall the
good housewife take such pains in pickling and preserving her
worthless fruits, her walnuts, her apricots, and quinces--and is
there not much _spiritual housewifery_ in treasuring up our mind's
best fruits--our heart's meditations in its most favored moments?

"This sad simile is much in the fashion of the old Moralizers, such
as I conceive honest Baxter to have been, such as Quarles and Wither
were with their curious, serio-comic, quaint emblems. But they
sometimes reach the heart, when a more elegant simile rests in the
fancy.

"Not low and mean, like these, but beautifully familiarized to our
conceptions, and condescending to human thoughts and notions, are all
the discourses of our LORD--conveyed in parable, or similitude, what
easy access do they win to the heart, through the medium of the
delighted imagination! speaking of heavenly things in fable, or in
simile, drawn from earth, from objects _common_, _accustomed_.

"Life's business, with such delicious little interruptions as our
correspondence affords, how pleasant it is!--why can we not paint on
the dull paper our whole feelings, exquisite as they rise up?"

FROM ANOTHER LETTER.

"----I had meant to have left off at this place; but looking back, I
am sorry to find too gloomy a cast tincturing my last page--a
representation of life false and unthankful. Life is _not_ all vanity
and disappointment--it hath much of evil in it, no doubt; but to
those who do not misuse it, it affords comfort, _temporary_ comfort,
much--much that endears us to it, and dignifies it--many true and
good feelings, I trust, of which we need not be ashamed--hours of
tranquillity and hope. But the morning was dull and overcast