not seem to me a difficulty.  My father said the other day, “There is a fine fortune to be made by any young woman, of even decent talent, on the stage now.”  A fine fortune is a fine thing; to be sure, there remains a rather material question to settle, that of “even decent talent.”  A passion for all beautiful poetry I am sure you will grant me; and you would perhaps be inclined to take my father and mother’s word for my dramatic capacity.  I spoke to them earnestly on this subject lately, and they both, with some reluctance, I think, answered me, to my questions, that they thought, as far as they could judge (and, unless partiality blinds them entirely, none can be better judges), I might succeed.  In some respects, no girl intending herself for this profession can have had better opportunities of acquiring just notions on the subject of acting.  I have constantly heard refined and thoughtful criticism on our greatest dramatic works, and on every various way of rendering them effective on the stage.  I have been lately very frequently to the theater, and seen and heard observingly, and exercised my own judgment and critical faculty to the best of my ability, according to these same canons of taste by which it has been formed.  Nature has certainly not been as favorable to me as might have been wished, if I am to embrace a calling where personal beauty, if not indispensable, is so great an advantage.  But if the informing spirit be mine, it shall go hard if, with a face and voice as obedient to my emotions as mine are, I do not in some measure make up for the want of good looks.  My father is now proprietor and manager of the theatre, and those certainly are favorable circumstances for my entering on a career which is one of great labor and some exposure, at the best, to a woman, and where a young girl cannot be too prudent herself, nor her protectors too careful of her.  I hope I have not taken up this notion hastily, and I have no fear of looking only on the bright side of the picture, for ours is a house where that is very seldom seen.

Good-by; God bless you!  I shall be very anxious to hear from you; I sent you a note with my play, telling you I had just got up from the measles; but as my note has not reached you, I tell you so again.  I am quite well, however, now, and shall not give them to you by signing myself

                      Yours most affectionately,
          
                                                     FANNY.

P.S.—­I forgot to answer your questions in telling you all this, but I will do so methodically now.  My side-ache is some disturbance in my liver, evidently, and does not give way entirely either to physic or exercise, as the slightest emotion, either pleasurable or painful, immediately brings it on; my blue devils I pass over in silence; such a liver and my kind of head are sure to breed them.

Certainly I reverence Jeremy Bentham