How true was the “presentiment” described in this letter, will appear in her correspondence with the same friend more than a quarter of a century later.

To Anna S. Prentiss, Richmond, June 1, 1843

I believe you and I were intended to know each other better I have found a certain something in you that I have been wanting all my life.  While I wish you to know me just as I am, faults and all, I can t bear to think of ever seeing anything but the good and the beautiful in your character, dear Anna, and I believe my heart would break outright should I find you to be otherwise than just that which I imagine you are.  I don’t know why I am saying this; but I have learned more of the world during the last year than in any previous half dozen of my life, and the result is dissatisfaction and alarm at the things I see about me.  I wish I could always live, as I have hitherto done, under the shelter of my mother’s wing....  I ought to ask your pardon for writing in this horrid style, but I was born to do things by steam, I believe, and can’t do them moderately.  As I write to, so I love you, dear Anna, with all my interests and energies tending to that one point.  I was amused the other day with a young lady who came and sat on my bed when I was sick (for I am just getting well from a quite serious illness), and after some half dozen sighs, wished she were Anna Prentiss that she might be loved as intensely as she desired.  This is a roundabout way of saying how very dear you are to me.  What chatter-boxes girls are!  I wonder how many times I’ve stopped to say “My dear, don’t talk so much—­for I am writing in school.”

June 27th—­Mr. ——­ brought “The Home” to me and I have laughed and cried over it to my heart’s content.  Out of pure self-love, because they said she was like me, I liked poor Petra with the big nose, best of the bunch—­though, to be sure, they liken me to somebody or other in every book we read till I begin to think myself quite a bundle of contradictions.  I have a thousand and one things to say to you, but I wonder if as soon as I see you I shall straightway turn into a poker, and play the stiffy, as I always do when I have been separated from my friends.  I am writing in a little bit of a den which, by a new arrangement, I have all to myself.  What if there’s no table here and I have to write upon the bureau, sitting on one foot in a chair and stretching upwards to reach my paper like a monkey?  What do I care?  I am writing to you, and your spirit, invoked when I took possession of the premises, comes here sometimes just between daylight and dark, and talks to me till I am ready to put forth my hand to find yours.  Oh!  Anna, you must be everything that is pure and good, through to the very depths of your heart, that mine may not ache in finding it has loved only an imaginary being.  Not that I expect you to be perfect—­for I shouldn’t love you if you were immaculate—­but pure in aim and intention and desire, which I believe you to be.