be right for you to have wine for
instance. Did you ever try the putting your feet into hot water at
night, to prevent the recurrence of the morning headache--for the
affection of the head comes on early in the morning, does it not? just
as if the sleeping did you harm. Now I have heard of such a remedy
doing good--and could it _increase_ the evil?--mustard mixed with the
water, remember. Everything approaching to _congestion_ is full of
fear--I tremble to think of it--and I bring no remedy by this teazing
neither! But you will not be 'wicked' nor 'unkind,' nor provoke the
evil consciously--you will keep quiet and forswear the going out at
nights, the excitement and noise of parties, and the worse excitement
of composition--you promise. If you knew how I keep thinking of you,
and at intervals grow so frightened! Think _you_, that you are three
times as much to me as I can be to you at best and greatest,--because
you are more than three times the larger planet--and because too, you
have known other sources of light and happiness ... but I need not say
this--and I shall hear on Monday, and may trust to you every day ...
may I not? Yet I would trust my soul to you sooner than your own
health.

May God bless you, dear, dearest. If the first part of the 'Soul's
Tragedy' should be written out, I can read _that_ perhaps, without
drawing you in to think of the second. Still it may be safer to keep
off altogether for the present--and let it be as you incline. I do not
speak of 'Luria.'

Your own

BA.

If it were not for Mr. Kenyon, I should say, almost, Wednesday,
instead of Thursday--I want to see you so much, and to see for myself
about the looks and spirits, only it would not do if he found you here
on Wednesday. Let him come to-morrow or on Tuesday, and Wednesday will
be safe--shall we consider? what do you think?

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

Sunday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]

Here is the letter again, dearest: I suppose it gives me the same
pleasure, in reading, as you--and Mr. K. as me, and anybody else as
him; if all the correspondence which was claimed again and burnt on
some principle or other some years ago be at all of the nature of this
sample, the measure seems questionable. Burn anybody's _real_
letters, well and good: they move and