lways one of
the gloomiest days of this gloomy month; here my windows are all
open, and the warm sun streaming in as it might on the finest of
early September days with us. I am to-day three-and-twenty. Where
is my life gone to? As the child said, "Where does the light go
when the candle is out?" ... Since last I wrote to you I have been
forty miles up the Hudson, and seen such noble waters and beautiful
hills, such glory of color and magnificent breadth in the grand
river and its autumn woods, as I cannot describe.

This is our last night but one of acting here. We play "The
Hunchback" on Saturday, and on Monday go back to Philadelphia for
three weeks; thence to Baltimore and Washington, and then return
here. I must go now and rehearse Katharine and Petruchio.

I have just finished Graham's "History," and am beginning John
Smith. By the by, a gentleman here is writing a play, in which I am
to act Pocahontas and my father Captain Smith. Come out and see it,
won't you? Good-by, dear. Think always of your affectionate

F. A. K.

December 9, 1832.
MY DEAREST H----,

I received yours of October 16th yesterday.... You are not
healthily natured enough to be inconstant. Yours is one of those
morbid organizations for whom the present never does its wholesome,
proper office of superseding the past, and your thoughts and
feelings, your whole inner life, in short, is always out of
perspective, because your background is forever your foreground,
and with you, half the time, nothing is but what is not; not in
consequence of looking forward, like Macbeth, but the reverse.... I
am delighted that you are going to Scotland to know my dear Mrs.
Harry Siddons.

Before this letter reaches you, however, you will have returned to
your castle, and your visit to Edinburgh will be over.... Mercy on
me! what disputations you and Mr. Combe will have had--on matters
physiological, psychological, phrenological, and philosophical! My
brains ache to imagine them.... Spurzheim, you know, is dead lately
in Boston. It is a matter of regret to me not to have seen him, and
his death will be a grief to the Combes, who venerate him
highly.... Making trial of people