a Catholic
but professes to be a nothingarian now. For myself, this only I know
that I earnestly wish all the tendencies of my heart to be heavenward,
and I believe that the sincere inquirer after truth will be guided by
the Infinite Mind. And so on that faith I venture myself and feel safe
as a child may feel, who holds his father's hand. Life seems full of
mysteries to me of late--and I am tempted to strange thoughtfulness in
the midst of its gayest scenes.

How true was the "presentiment" described in this letter, will appear in
her correspondence with the same friend more than a quarter of a century
later.

_To Anna S. Prentiss, Richmond, June 1, 1843_

I believe you and I were intended to know each other better I have found
a certain something in you that I have been wanting all my life. While I
wish you to know me just as I am, faults and all, I can t bear to
think of ever seeing anything but the good and the beautiful in your
character, dear Anna, and I believe my heart would break outright should
I find you to be otherwise than just that which I imagine you are. I
don't know why I am saying this; but I have learned more of the world
during the last year than in any previous half dozen of my life, and the
result is dissatisfaction and alarm at the things I see about me. I wish
I could always live, as I have hitherto done, under the shelter of my
mother's wing.... I ought to ask your pardon for writing in this horrid
style, but I was born to do things by steam, I believe, and can't do
them moderately. As I write to, so I love you, dear Anna, with all my
interests and energies tending to that one point. I was amused the other
day with a young lady who came and sat on my bed when I was sick (for I
am just getting well from a quite serious illness), and after some half
dozen sighs, wished she were Anna Prentiss that she might be loved as
intensely as she desired. This is a roundabout way of saying how very
dear you are to me. What chatter-boxes girls are! I wonder how many
times I've stopped to say "My dear, don't talk so much--for I am writing
in school."

_June 27th_--Mr. ---- brought "The Home" to me and I have laughed and
cried over it to my heart's content. Out of pure self-love, because they
said she was like me, I liked poor Petra with the big nose, best of the
bunch--though, to be sure, they liken me to somebody or other in
every book we read till I begin to think myself quite a bundle of
contradictions.