the vibration now struck will extend--I will live and
die with your beautiful ring, your beloved hair--comforting me,
blessing me.

Let me write to-morrow--when I think on all you have been and are to
me, on the wonder of it and the deliciousness, it makes the paper
words that come seem vainer than ever--To-morrow I will write.

May God bless you, my own, my precious--

I am all your own

R.B.

I have thought again, and believe it will be best to select the finger
_you_ intended ... as the alteration will be simpler, I find; and one
is less liable to observation and comment.

Was not that Mr. Kenyon last evening? And did he ask, or hear, or say
anything?

_R.B. to E.B.B._

[Post-mark, December 3, 1845.]

See, dearest, what the post brings me this minute! Now, is it not a
good omen, a pleasant inconscious prophecy of what is to be? Be it
well done, or badly--there are you, leading me up and onward, in his
review as everywhere, at every future time! And our names will go
together--be read together. In itself this is nothing to _you_, dear
poet--but the unexpectedness, unintended significance of it has
pleased me very much--_does_ it not please you?--I thought I was to
figure in that cold _Quarterly_ all by myself, (for he writes for
it)--but here you are close by me; it cannot but be for good. He has
no knowledge whatever that I am even a friend of yours. Say you are
pleased!

There was no writing yesterday for me--nor will there be much to-day.
In some moods, you know, I turn and take a thousand new views of what
you say ... and find fault with you to your surprise--at others, I
rest on you, and feel _all_ well, all _best_ ... now, for one
instance, even that phrase of the _possibility_ 'and what is to
follow,'--even _that_ I cannot except against--I am happy, contented;
too well, too prodigally blessed to be even able to murmur just
sufficiently loud to get, in addition to it all, a sweetest stopping
of the mouth! I will say quietly and becomingly 'Yes--I do promise
you'--yet it is some solace to--No--I will _not_ even couple the
promise with an adjuration that you, at the same time, see that they
care for me properly at Hanwell Asylum ... the best by all accounts:
yet I feel so sure of _you_, so safe and confident in you! If any of
it had been _my_ work, my own ... distrust and foreb