_must_; and I know we must suffer, but we suffer more than we _must_
too....

God bless you, dear.

Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.

PHILADELPHIA, Sunday, May 27th.
MY DEAR MRS. JAMESON,

I have received within the last few days your second letter from London;
the date, however, is rather a puzzle, it being _August the 10th_,
instead (I presume) of April. I hasten, while I am yet able, to send you
word of R. S----'s rapid and almost complete recovery....

In spite of the admirable forethought which prompted the beginning of
this letter, my dear Mrs. Jameson, it is now exactly a fortnight since I
wrote the above lines; and here I am at my writing-table, in my
drawing-room, having in the interim _perpetrated_ another girl baby....
My new child was born on the same day of the month that her sister was,
and within an hour of the same time, which I think shows an orderly,
systematic, and methodical mode of proceeding in such matters, which is
creditable to me.... I should have been unhappy at the delay of my
intelligence about R. S----, but that I feel sure Catharine must ere
this have written to you herself. I am urging her might and main to come
to us and recruit a little, but, like all other very good people, she
thinks she can do something better than take care of herself; a
lamentable fallacy, for which good people in particular, and the world
in general, suffer.

As you may suppose, I do not yet indulge in the inditing of very long
epistles, and shall therefore make no apology for this, which is almost
brief enough to be witty. I am glad you like Sully, because I love him.

I am ever yours very truly,
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, 1838.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,

This purposes to be an answer to a letter of yours dated the 10th of
May; the last I have received from you.... I cannot for the life of me
imagine why we envelope death in such hideous and mysterious
dreadfulness, when, for aught we can tell, being born is to an infant
quite as horrible and mysterious a process, perhaps (for we know nothing
about it) of a not much different order. The main difference lies in the
fact of our anticipation of the one event--_ma, chi sa?_--but al