From all the opinions that I hear expressed upon the subject, it
does not seem as though the system of election prevalent here works
much better, or is much freer from abuses, than the well-vilified
one which England has just been reforming. Bribery and corruption
are familiar here as elsewhere, to those who have, and those who
wish to have, power; and I have not yet heard a single American
speak of our Radical reformers without uplifted hands at what they
consider their folly in not "letting well alone," or, as they say,
in substituting one set of abuses for another, as they declare we
shall do if we adopt their vote by ballot system.

I have now written you a philosophical, moral, and political
letter, and beg you will score up my attempt to write rationally
against the loads of gibberish I have from time to time discoursed
to you. Good bless you, dearest H----! Three thousand miles away, I
am still

Always your affectionate
F. A. K.

PHILADELPHIA, October 22, 1832.
DEAR H----,

My first news is deplorable, and I beg you will lament over it
accordingly. I eat little, drink less, rehearse six mornings and
act five nights a week; in spite of all which, and riding a
heavy-going, jolting, shambling, hard-pulling horse, I have grown
so fat that I really cannot perceive that there is any shape in
particular about me. Grotesque things sometimes are melancholy too,
and it is so with me, for I am both....

My father and Dall are very well; at this moment he is busy saying,
and she hearing him say, the part of Fazio, which he is to act with
me to-morrow night. I dread it dreadfully; acting anything painful
with him always tries my nerves extremely.

Bianca is a part of terrible excitement in itself, without the
addition of having to act it to his Fazio. I cannot get rid of his
being he, and it agonizes me really to see his sham agony; however,
"'tis my vocation, Hal." It is very well that our audiences should
look at us as mere puppets, for could they sometimes see the real
feelings of those for whose false miseries their sympathies are
excited, I believe sufficiently in their humanity to think they
would kindly give us leave t