of existence, for the purposes of
spiritual progress and improvement; the education of the soul; but my
nature, impatient of restraint and pain and trial (and therefore most in
need of the discipline of life), always rejoices at the first aspect of
death, as at that of the Deliverer. Sudden death I certainly pray _for_,
rather than _against_, and I think my father and sister were horrified
and indignant at my saying that I could not conceive a better way of
dying than being smashed, as we were all together, on that railway,
dashed to pieces in a moment, like those eight men who perished there
the other day.... This drew forth a suggestion that, if such were my
sentiments, we had better hire a carriage on the Brighton railroad, and
keep incessantly running up and down the line, by which means there
would be every probability of my dying in the way I thought most
desirable.

I wish you would just step over from Ireland and spend the evening with
me; Adelaide and my father will be at the theatre....

God bless you, dearest Harriet.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

[Some years after writing this letter, having returned to the stage,
I was fulfilling an engagement at the Hull theatre, and as I stood
at the side scene, waiting to go on, two poor young girls were
standing near me, of that miserable class from which the temporarily
employed supernumeraries of country theatres are recruited. One of
them, who looked as if she was dying of consumption, and coughed
incessantly, said to her companion, who remarked upon it, "Yes, I go
on so pretty much all the time, and I have a mind sometimes to kill
myself." "That's running away from school, my child," said I. "Don't
do it, for you can't tell whether you mayn't be put to just as hard
or even a harder life to finish your lesson in another world." "O
Lord, ma'am!" said the girl, "I never thought of that." "But I have
very often," said I to her, as I went on the stage to finish my
mumming.

The strange ignorance of all the conditions of life (except their
own most wretched ones), even those but a few degrees removed from
their own, of these poor creatures, betrayed itself in their
awestruck admiration of my stage ornaments, which they took for real
jewels. "Oh, but," said I, as they gazed at them with wonder, "if
they