the absence of the intelligence which should enlighten. I had the good discipline of trying to make allowance for those making none, to be charitable to their want of charity, and cool without being cold. But I don’t know when I have felt such an aversion to my environment, and prayed so earnestly day by day, — “O, Eternal! purge from my inmost heart this hot haste about ephemeral trifles,” and “keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me.”
What a change from the almost vestal quiet of “Aunt Mary’s” life, to all this open-windowed, open-eyed screaming of “poltroon,” “nefarious plan,” “entire depravity,” &c. &c’
‘July, 1842. Boston. — I have been entertaining the
girls here with my old experiences at Groton. They
have been very fresh in my mind this week. Had I
but been as wise in such matters then as now, how
easy and fair I might have made the whole! Too late,
too late to live, but not too late to think! And as that
maxim of the wise Oriental teaches, “the Acts of this
life shall be the Fate of the next.”
* * * ‘I would have my friends tender of me, not because I am frail, but because I am capable of strength; — patient, because they see in me a principle that must, at last, harmonize all the exuberance of my character. I did not well understand what you felt, but I am willing to admit that what you said of my “over-great impetuosity” is just. You will, perhaps, feel it more and more. It may at times hide my better self. When it does, speak, I entreat, as harshly as you feel. Let me be always sure I know the worst.
