reatest dramatic works, and on every various way of rendering them
effective on the stage. I have been lately very frequently to the
theater, and seen and heard observingly, and exercised my own
judgment and critical faculty to the best of my ability, according
to these same canons of taste by which it has been formed. Nature
has certainly not been as favorable to me as might have been
wished, if I am to embrace a calling where personal beauty, if not
indispensable, is so great an advantage. But if the informing
spirit be mine, it shall go hard if, with a face and voice as
obedient to my emotions as mine are, I do not in some measure make
up for the want of good looks. My father is now proprietor and
manager of the theatre, and those certainly are favorable
circumstances for my entering on a career which is one of great
labor and some exposure, at the best, to a woman, and where a young
girl cannot be too prudent herself, nor her protectors too careful
of her. I hope I have not taken up this notion hastily, and I have
no fear of looking only on the bright side of the picture, for ours
is a house where that is very seldom seen.

Good-by; God bless you! I shall be very anxious to hear from you; I
sent you a note with my play, telling you I had just got up from
the measles; but as my note has not reached you, I tell you so
again. I am quite well, however, now, and shall not give them to
you by signing myself

Yours most affectionately,
FANNY.

P.S.--I forgot to answer your questions in telling you all this,
but I will do so methodically now. My side-ache is some disturbance
in my liver, evidently, and does not give way entirely either to
physic or exercise, as the slightest emotion, either pleasurable or
painful, immediately brings it on; my blue devils I pass over in
silence; such a liver and my kind of head are sure to breed them.

Certainly I reverence Jeremy Bentham for his philanthropy, plain
powerful sense, and lucid forcible writing; but as for John's
politics, they are, as Beatrice tells the prince he is, "too costly
for every-day wear." His theories are so perfect that I think
imperfect men could never be brought to live under a scheme of
government of his de