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faults in such a manner as to irritate without helping me. A friend to whom I would acknowledge all my faults must be perfect.
Let any one once be provoked, once speak harshly to me, once sweep all the chords of my soul out of tune, I never could confide there again.
It is only to the most perfect Being in the universe that imperfection can look and hope for patience.
How strange! . . . You do not know how harsh and forbidding everything seems, compared with his character.
All through the day in my intercourse with others, everything has a tendency to destroy the calmness of mind gained by communion with Him. One flatters me, another is angry with me, another is unjust to me.
You speak of your predilections for literature having been a snare to you. I have found it so myself.
I can scarcely think, without tears and indignation, that all that is beautiful and lovely and poetical has been laid on other altars.
Oh! will there never be a poet with a heart enlarged and purified by the Holy Spirit, who shall throw all the graces of harmony, all the enchantments of feeling, pathos, and poetry, around sentiments worthy of them? ... It matters little what service He has for me. ... I do not mean to live in vain.
He has given me talents, and I will lay them at his feet, well satisfied, if He will accept them.
All my powers He can enlarge.
He made my mind, and He can teach me to cultivate and exert its faculties.
The following November she writes from
Groton, Conn., to
Miss May:--
I am in such an uncertain, unsettled state, traveling back and forth, that I have very little time to write.
