le experience that I have not been
called upon to perform since I have lived here, from marking out the
proper joints on the carcass of a dead sheep, into which it should be
divided for the table, to officiating as clergyman to a congregation of
our own poor people, whose desire for religious instruction appears to
be in exact proportion to the difficulty they have in obtaining it....

I am on horseback every day, clearing paths through the woods; and
though the life I lead has but a very remote resemblance to that of a
civilized creature, a quondam dweller in the two great cities of the
world and frequenter of polished societies therein, it has some
recommendations of its own. To be sure, so it should have; for I inhabit
a house where the staircase is open to the roof, and the roof,
unmitigated by ceiling, plaster, skylight, or any intermediate shelter,
presents to my admiring gaze, as I ascend and descend, the seamy side of
the tiles, or rather wooden shingles, with which the house is covered;
with all the rude raftering, through which do shine the sun, moon, and
stars, the winds do blow, and the rain of heaven does fall. Every door
in the house is fastened with wooden latches and pack-thread; the
identical device of Red Riding-hood antiquity, and the solitary bell of
the establishment rings by means of a rope, suspended from the lintel,
_outside_ the room where I sit, and I expect to find myself hanging in
it every time I go in and out, and which always inclines me to inquire
what has been done with the body that was last cut down from it....

F. A. B.

ST. SIMON'S ISLAND, March 17th, 1839.

That letter of yours which I lamented as lost, my dear Harriet, has
reached me all stained and defaced (yet not so but that it can be read),
having evidently been steeped in the merciless waves of the Mersey. Your
letter has suffered shipwreck, having of course been cast back towards
you, in one of those unfortunate New York packets which were lost in
those late tremendous gales; and if the poor pickled sheet of paper
could speak anything beside what you have told it, how many sad horrors,
unrecorded in the summary newspaper reports of the late disasters, it
might reveal.

I have a dreadful dread, and a fearful fear, of drowning, and the sight
of your letter, all sea-stained, conjures up as many terrible thoughts
as poor Clarenc