PORTLAND, Sept. 15, 1841.

The Lord Jesus is indeed dear to me.  I can not doubt it.  His name is exceedingly precious.  Oh, help me, my dear cousin, to love Him more, to attain His image, to live only for Him!  I blush and am ashamed when I consider how inadequate are the returns I am making Him; yet I can praise Him for all that is past and trust Him for all that is to come.  I can not tell you how delightful prayer is.  I feel that in it I have communion with God—­that He is here—­that He is mine and that I am His.  I long to make progress every day, each minute seems precious, and I constantly tremble lest I should lose one in returning, instead of pressing forward with all my strength.  No, not my strength, for I have none, but with all which the Lord gives me.  How can I thank you enough that you pray for me!

Sept. 18th.—­I am all the time so nervous that life would be insupportable if I had not the comfort of comforts to rejoice in.  I often think mother would not trust me to carry the dishes to the closet, if she knew how strong an effort I have to make to avoid dashing them all to pieces.  When I am at the head of the stairs I can hardly help throwing myself down, and I believe it a greater degree of just such a state as this which induces the suicide to put an end to his existence.  It was never so bad with me before.  Do you know anything of such a feeling as this?  To-night, for instance, my head began to feel all at once as if it were enlarging till at last it seemed to fill the room, and I thought it large enough to carry away the house.  Then every object of which I thought enlarged in proportion.  When this goes off the sense of the contraction is equally singular.  My head felt about the size of a pin’s head; our church and everybody in it appeared about the bigness of a cup, etc.  These strange sensations terminate invariably with one still more singular and particularly pleasant.  I can not describe it—­it is a sense of smoothness and a little of dizziness.  If you never had such feelings this will be all nonsense to you, but if you have and can explain them to me, why I shall be indeed thankful.  I have been subject to them ever since I can remember.  I never met with a physician yet who seemed to know what is the matter with me, or to care a fig whether I got well or not.  All they do is to roll up their eyes and shake their heads and say, “Oh!” ...  As to the wedding, we had a regular fuss, so that I hardly knew whether I was in the body or out of it.  The Professor was here only two days.  He is very eminently holy, his friends say, and from what I saw of him, I should think it true.  This was the point which interested sister in him.  As soon as the wedding was over my spirits departed and fled.  It is true enough that “marriage involves one union, but many separations.”