TO MRS. HECKER.—­“Brook Farm, May 16, 1843.—­DEAR MOTHER:  You will not take it unkind, my not writing to you before?  I am sure you will not, for you know what I am.  Daily I feel more and more indebted to you for my life, especially when I feel happy and good.  How can I repay you?  As you, no doubt, would wish me to-by becoming better and living as you have desired and prayed that I should, which I trust, by Divine assistance, I may.

“Mother, I cannot express the depth of gratitude I feel toward you for the tender care and loving discipline with which you brought me up to manhood.  Without it, oh! what might I not have been?  The good that I have, under God, I am conscious that I am greatly indebted to thee for; at times I feel that it is thou acting in me, and that there is nothing that can ever separate us.  A bond which is as eternal as our immortality, our life, binds us together and cannot be broken.

“Mother, that I should be away from home at present no doubt makes you sorrowful often, and you wish me back.  Let me tell you how it is with me.  The life which surrounds me in New York oppresses me, contracts my feelings, and abridges my liberty.  Business, as it is now pursued, is a burden upon my spiritual life, and all its influence hurtful to the growth of a better life.  This I have felt for a long time, and feel it now more intensely than before.  And the society I had there was not such as benefited me.  My life was not increased by theirs, and I was gradually ceasing to be.  I was lonely, friendless, and without object in this world, while at the same time I was conscious of a greater degree of activity of mind in another direction.  These causes still remain. . . .

“. . .  I feel fully conscious of the importance of making any change in my life at my present age—­giving up those advantages which so many desire; as well as the necessity of being considerate, prudent, and slow to decide.  I am aware that my future state here, and hence hereafter, will greatly depend upon the steps I now take, and therefore I would do nothing unadvised or hastily.  I would not sacrifice eternal for worldly life.  At present I wish to live a true life, desiring nothing external, seeing that things external cannot procure those things for and in which I live.  I do not renounce things, but feel no inclination for them.  All is indifferent to me—­poverty or riches, life or death.  I am loosed.  But do not on this account think I am sorrowful; nay, for I have nothing to sorrow for.  Is there no bright hope at a distance which cheers me onward and beckons me to speed?  I dare not say.  Sometimes I feel so—­it is the unutterable.  Yet I remain contented to be without spring or autumn, youth or age.  One tie has been loosened after another; the dreams of my youth have passed away silently, and the visions of the future I then beheld have vanished.  I feel awakened as from a dream, and like a shadow has my past gone by.  With the verse at the bottom of the picture you gave me, I can say: