girl, but most wofully ignorant, and one who murders
our luckless mother-tongue after a fashion that almost maddens me.
However, as with some cultivation, education, reading, reflection, and
that desire to do what is best that a mother alone can feel for her own
child, I cannot but be conscious of my own inability in all points to
discharge this great duty, the inability of my nursery-maid does not
astonish or dismay me. The remedy for the nurse's deficiencies must be
in _me_, and the remedy for mine in God, to whose guidance I commit
myself and my darlings.... Margery was very anxious to remain with me as
my maid; but we have reduced our establishment, and I have no longer any
maid of my own, therefore I could not keep her....

With regard to attempting to make "reason the guide of your child's
actions," that, of course, must be a very gradual process, and may, in
my opinion, be tried too early. Obedience is the first virtue of which a
young child is capable, the first duty it can perform; and the authority
of a parent is, I think, the first impression it should receive,--a
strictly reasonable and just claim, inasmuch as, furnishing my child
with all its means of existence, as well as all its amusements and
enjoyments, regard for my requests is the proper and only return it can
make in the absence of sufficient judgment, to decide upon their
propriety, and the motives by which they are dictated.

Good-bye, dearest Harriet.

I am ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, March 16th, 1840.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,

It was with infinite pain that I received your last letter [a very
unfavorable report, almost a sentence of death, had been pronounced by
the physicians upon my friend's dearest friend, Miss Dorothy Wilson],
and yet I know not, except your sorrow, what there is so deplorable in
the fact that Dorothy, who is one of the living best prepared for death,
should have received a summons, which on first reading of it shocked me
so terribly.

We calculate most blindly, for the most part, in what form the call to
"change our life" may be least unwelcome; but to one whose eyes have
long been steadily fixed upon that event, I do not believe the manner of
their death signifies much.

Pain, our poor human bodies shrink from; and yet it has been endured,
almost as if unfelt, no