write this with ease; it is done in tears, and I have opened my mind as I have not done before.  How all this will end I know not, but cannot but trust God.  It is not my will but my destiny, which will not be one of ease and pleasure, but one which I contemplate as a perpetual sacrifice of my past hopes, though of a communion I had never felt.  Can I adopt a course of life to increase and fulfil my present life?  I am unable to give this decision singly.  You will, I hope, accept this letter in the spirit I have written it.  I speak to you in a sense I never have spoken to you before.  In this letter I have opened as far as I could my inmost life.  My heart is full and I would say a great deal more.  Truly, a new life has opened to me, and to turn backward would be death.  Not suddenly has it undergone this change, but it has come to that crisis where my decision must be made; hence am I forced to write this letter.  For its answer I shall wait with intense anxiety.  Hoping you will write soon, my love to all.—­ISAAC.”

The next letter, though addressed to his brothers, was apparently intended for the whole family, and begins with more than Isaac’s customary abruptness: 

“Chelsea, December 28, 1842.—­I will open my mind so that you can have the materials to judge from as well as myself.  I feel unable to the task of judging alone correctly.  I have given an account of my state of mind in my former letter, but will add that what is there said describes a permanent state, not a momentary excitement.  You may think that in a little time this would pass away, and I would be able to resume my former life; or, at least, you could so adapt things at home that although I should not precisely occupy myself as then, still it might be so arranged as to give me that which I feel necessary in order to live somewhat contented.

“I am sorry to say I can in no way conceive such an arrangement of things at home.  Why?  I hate to say it, yet we might as well come to an understanding.  I have grown out of the life which can be received through the accustomed channels of the circle that was around me.  I am subject to thoughts and feelings which the others had no interest in; hence they could not be expressed.  There can be no need to tell you this—­you all must have seen it.  How can I stop my life from flowing on?  You must see the case I stand in.  Do not think I have less of the feelings of a brother and a son.  My heart never was closer, not so close as it is now to yours. . . .

“Do not think this is imagination; in this I have had too much experience.  The life that was in me had none to commune with, and I felt it was consuming me.  I tried to express this in different ways obscurely, but it appeared singular and no one understood me.  This was the cause of my wishing to go away, hoping I would either get clear of it or something might turn up, I knew not what.  One course was advised by the doctor, and you all thought