defiance to fate of this message:
"We sail in the _Russia_ on the 3d; have dinner for us at the
Adelphi on the 11th."]

PHILADELPHIA, Sunday, October 29th, 1837.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,

We landed in New York, ten days ago, _i.e._, on Friday, the 20th
October; and had we come on immediately hither, your letter would have
been just in time to greet me on my arrival here; but our passage was of
thirty-seven days, stormy as well as tedious, and I was so ill that I
did not leave my bed six times during the crossing; the consequence was,
that on landing I looked more like a ghost than a living creature, and
was so reduced in strength as hardly to be able to stand, so we remained
in New York a few days, till I was able to travel.... Our
fellow-passengers, the women, I mean, were rather vulgar, commonplace
people, with whom I should not have had much sympathy, had I been well.
As it was, I saw but little of them, and may consider that one of the
counterbalancing advantages of having suffered so much.

One of them was in circumstances which interested me a good deal, though
there was little in herself to do so. Her husband was a Staffordshire
potter, and had gone to the United States to establish a pottery there;
to begin the building up of a large concern, and lay the foundation for
probable future wealth and prosperity. He had been gone two years, and
she was now going out to join him with their four children. In his
summons to her after this long separation, he told her that all had
prospered with him, that he had bought a large tract of land, found
excellent soil, water, and means of every description for his
manufacturing purposes, obtained a patent, and established his business,
and was every way likely to thrive and be successful.

What hope, what energy, what enterprise, what industry, in but two years
of one human existence! What a world of doubt, of distressful anxiety
and misgiving in the heart of the woman, left to patient expectation, to
prayerful, tearful hopes and fears! What trust in man and faith in God
during those two years! And now, with her children, she was coming to
rejoin her helpmate, and begin life all over again, with him and them,
in a strange country, in the midst of strangers, with everything strange
about her. I lay thinking with much sympathy of this poor woman and her
feelings, during my miserable confinement to my berth through that
dismal voyage. She w