12th Mo. 27th.  The mean self-indulgence of sleeping late has come over me again, though I found, a week or two since, after a firm resolve, the difficulty vanish.  This morning I had no time for retirement before breakfast; and, should circumstances ever become less under my control, this habit may prevent my having any morning oblation.  The weakness and sinfulness of my heart have been making me almost tremble at the thought of another year:  how shall I meet its thousand dangers and not fall?  In religious communications in our house, I am apt to look for any intimation that I could appropriate of a shortened pilgrimage; but very little of the sort has occurred:  indeed, I expect my selfish wish will not be gratified, of escaping early from this toilsome world; but how rash and ungrateful are such thoughts! how much better all these things are in my Father’s hands!  Oh, if I may be there too in the form of passive clay, and receive all His tutoring and refining, this will be enough:  and should my future way be full of sorrows, heaven will bring me sweeter rest at last; when the whole work is done, when the robes are quite washed, when the fight is quite fought, and the death died; when the eternal life, which shall blossom above, is brought into actual health here, and real fellowship is made with my last hour.

1st Mo. 10th, 1845.  I am inclined to set down the events of my little world for the past week; that in days to come, should it prove that I have been following “cunningly devised fables,” I may beware of such entanglements again; and that if they be found a guidance from above, their contemptibleness and seeming folly may be shown to be in wisdom.  I have, from my childhood, delighted in poetry:  if lonely, it was my companion; if sad, my comfort; if glad, it gave a voice to my joy.  Of late, I have enjoyed writing pieces of a religious nature, though I must confess the excitement, the possession which the act of composition made of my mind, did not always favor the experience of what I sought to express.  Two pieces of this kind I asked my father to send to the Friend:  he liked them, but proposed my adding something to one.  I had had a sweet little season by myself just before:  then, sliding from feeling to composition, I thought of it all the rest of the evening, and when I went to bed, stayed some time writing four lines for the conclusion; after I was in bed, my heart was full of it, and I composed four lines more to precede them, with which I fell asleep.  In the morning I resolved not to think of them till I had had my silent devotions; they came upon me while I was dressing, and, having forgotten one line, I stayed long making a substitute:  then I retired to read, and, if possible, to pray, but it was not possible in that condition:  I did but sit squaring and