ark, August 25, 1845.]

But what have _I_ done that you should ask what have _you_ done? I
have not brought any accusation, have I ... no, nor _thought_ any, I
am sure--and it was only the 'kindness and considerateness'--argument
that was irresistible as a thing to be retorted, when your thanks came
so naturally and just at the corner of an application. And then, you
know, it is gravely true, seriously true, sadly true, that I am always
expecting to hear or to see how tired you are at last of me!--sooner
or later, you know!--But I did not mean any seriousness in that
letter. No, nor did I mean ... (to pass to another question ...) to
provoke you to the

Mister Hayley ... so are _you_....

reply complimentary. All I observed concerning yourself, was the
_combination_--which not an idiom in chivalry could treat
grammatically as a thing common to _me_ and you, inasmuch as everyone
who has known me for half a day, may know that, if there is anything
peculiar in me, it lies for the most part in an extraordinary
deficiency in this and this and this, ... there is no need to describe
what. Only nuns of the strictest sect of the nunneries are rather
wiser in some points, and have led less restricted lives than I have
in others. And if it had not been for my 'carpet-work'--

Well--and do you know that I have, for the last few years, taken quite
to despise book-knowledge and its effect on the mind--I mean when
people _live by it_ as most readers by profession do, ... cloistering
their souls under these roofs made with heads, when they might be
under the sky. Such people grow dark and narrow and low, with all
their pains.

_Friday._--I was writing you see before you came--and now I go on in
haste to speak 'off my mind' some things which are on it. First ... of
yourself; how can it be that you are unwell again, ... and that you
should talk (now did you not?--did I not hear you say so?) of being
'weary in your soul' ... _you_? What should make _you_, dearest
friend, weary in your soul; or out of spirits in any way?--Do ... tell
me.... I was going to write without a pause--and almost I might,
perhaps, ... even as one of the two hundred of your friends, ...
almost I might say out that 'Do tell me.' Or is it (which I am
inclined to think most probable) that you are tired of a same life and
want change? It may happen to anyone sometimes, and is independent of
your will and choice, you know--and I know, and the whole world knows