MY JOURNAL TO MY COUSIN MARY.

March, 1855.

Of all the letters of condolence I have received since my misfortune, yours has consoled me most.  It surprises me, I confess, that a far-away cousin—­of whom I only remember that she had the sweetest of earthly smiles—­should know better how to reach the heart of my grief and soothe it into peace, than any nearest of kin or oldest of friends.  But so it has been, and therefore I feel that your more intimate acquaintance would be something to interest me and keep my heart above despair.

My sister Catalina, my devoted nurse, says I must snatch at anything likely to do that, as a drowning man catches at straws, or I shall be overwhelmed by this calamity.  But is it not too late?  Am I not overwhelmed?  I feel that life is a revolting subject of contemplation in my circumstances, a poor thing to look forward to.  Death itself looks pleasanter.

Call up to your mind what I was, and what my circumstances were.  I was healthy and strong.  I could run, and wrestle, and breast strong winds, and cleave rough waters, and climb steep hills,—­things I shall henceforth be able only to remember,—­yes, and to sigh to do again.

I was thoroughly educated for my profession.  I was panting to fulfil its duties and rise to its honors.  I was beginning to make my way up.  I had gained one cause,—­my first and last,—­and my friends thought me justified in entertaining the highest hopes.

It had always been an object of ambition with me to—­well, I will confess—­to be popular in society; and I know I was not the reverse.—­So much, Mary, for what I was.  Now see what I am.

I am, and shall forever be,—­so the doctors tell me,—­a miserable, sickly, helpless being, without hope of health or independence.  My object in life can only be—­to be comfortable, if possible, and not to be an intolerable trial to those about me!  Worth living for,—­isn’t it?

An athlete, eager and glowing in the race of life, transformed by a thunder-bolt into a palsied and whining cripple for whom there is no Pool of Bethesda,—­that is what has befallen me!

I suppose you read the shocking details of the collision in the papers.  Catalina and I sat, of course, side by side in the cars.  We had that day met in New York, after a separation of years.  She had just returned from Europe.  I went to meet and escort her home, and, as we whirled over the Jersey sands, I told her of all my plans and hopes.  She listened at first with her usual lively interest; but as I went on, she looked me full in the face with an air of exasperated endurance, as if what I proposed to accomplish were beyond reason.  I own that I was in a fool’s paradise of buoyant expectation.  At last she interrupted me.

“Ah, yes!  No doubt!  You’ll do those trifles, of course!  And, perhaps, among your other plans and intentions is that of living forever?  It is an easy thing to resolve upon;—­better not stop short of it.”