can one be sure of not sitting down in the midst of indulgence to pamper tastes alone, and how easy to cheat one’s self with the fancy that a little easy reading or writing is quite work.  I am safer; I do not sleep on roses.  I smile to myself, when with these friends, at their care of me.  I let them do as they will, for I know it will not last long enough to spoil me.’

* * * * *

’I take great pleasure in talking with Aunt Mary.[B] Her strong and simple nature checks not, falters not.  Her experience is entirely unlike mine, as, indeed, is that of most others whom I know.  No rapture, no subtle process, no slow fermentation in the unknown depths, but a rill struck out from the rock, clear and cool in all its course, the still, small voice.  She says the guide of her life has shown itself rather as a restraining, than an impelling principle.  I like her life, too, as far as I see it; it is dignified and true.’

* * * * *

’Cambridge, July, 1842.—­A letter at Providence would have been like manna in the wilderness.  I came into the very midst of the fuss,[C] and, tedious as it was at the time, I am glad to have seen it.  I shall in future be able to believe real, what I have read with a dim disbelief of such times and tendencies.  There is, indeed, little good, little cheer, in what I have seen:  a city full of grown-up people as wild, as mischief-seeking, as full of prejudice, careless slander, and exaggeration, as a herd of boys in the play-ground of the worst boarding-school.  Women whom I have seen, as the domestic cat, gentle, graceful, cajoling, suddenly showing the disposition, if not the force, of the tigress.  I thought I appreciated the monstrous growths of rumor before, but I never did.  The Latin poet, though used to a court, has faintly described what I saw and heard often, in going the length of a street.  It is astonishing what force, purity and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.  These absurdities, of course, are linked with good qualities, with energy of feeling, and with a love of morality, though narrowed and vulgarized by 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.’

* * * * *