DEAR Miss
Fryer,—Your letter found me just returned from keeping my
birthday (pretty innocent!) at Dover-street. I see them pretty often. I have
since had letters of business to write, or should have replied earlier. In one
word, be less uneasy about me; I bear my privations very well; I am not in the
depths of desolation, as heretofore. Your admonitions are not lost upon me.
Your kindness has sunk into my heart. Have faith in me! It is no new thing for
me to be left to my sister. When she is not violent, her rambling chat is
better to me than the sense and sanity of this world. Her heart is obscured,
not buried; it breaks out occasionally; and one can discern a strong mind
struggling with the billows that have gone over it. I could be nowhere happier
than under the same roof with her. Her memory is unnaturally strong; and from
ages past, if we may so call the earliest records of our poor life, she fetches
thousands of names and things that never would have dawned upon me again, and
thousands from the ten years she lived before me. What took place from early
girlhood to her coming of age principally lives again (every important thing
and every trifle) in her brain with the vividness of real presence. For twelve
hours incessantly she will pour out without intermission all her past life,
forgetting nothing, pouring out name after name to the
Waldens as a dream; sense and nonsense; truths and
errors
| 1834 | WOOLMAN AND WALTON | 929 |
Very, very tired, I began this epistle, having been epistolising all the morning, and very kindly would I end it, could I find adequate expressions to your kindness. We did set our minds on seeing you in spring. One of us will indubitably. But I am not skilled in almanac learning, to know when spring precisely begins and ends. Pardon my blots; I am glad you like your book. I wish it had been half as worthy of your acceptance as “John Woolman.” But ’tis a good-natured book.
