at my seventy-five letters--there is room to breathe in them. And this
is my idea (_ecce_!) of monumental brevity--and _hic jacet_ at last

Your E.B.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Sunday Night.
[Post-mark, November 24, 1845.]

But a word to-night, my love--for my head aches a little,--I had to
write a long letter to my friend at New Zealand, and now I want to sit
and think of you and get well--but I must not quite lose the word I
counted on.

So, _that_ way you will take my two days and turn them against me?
_Oh, you!_ Did I say the 'root' had been striking then, or rather,
that the seeds, whence the roots take leisure and grow, _they_ had
been planted then--and might not a good heart and hand drop acorns
enough to grow up into a complete Dodona-grove,--when the very rook,
say farmers, hides and forgets whole navies of ship-wood one day to
be, in his summer storing-journeys? But this shall do--I am not going
to prove what _may_ be, when here it _is_, to my everlasting
happiness.

--And 'I am kind'--there again! Do I not know what you mean by that?
Well it is some comfort that you make all even in some degree, and
take from my faculties here what you give them, spite of my
protesting, in other directions. So I could not when I first saw you
admire you very much, and wish for your friendship, and be willing to
give you mine, and desirous of any opportunity of serving you,
benefiting you; I could not think the finding myself in a position to
feel this, just this and no more, a sufficiently fortunate event ...
but I must needs get up, or imitate, or ... what is it you fancy I do?
... an utterly distinct, unnecessary, inconsequential regard for you,
which should, when it got too hard for shamming at the week's
end,--should simply spoil, in its explosion and departure, all the
real and sufficing elements of an honest life-long attachment and
affections! that I should do this, and think it a piece of kindness
does....

Now, I'll tell you what it _does_ deserve, and what it shall get. Give
me, dearest beyond expression, what I have always dared to think I
would ask you for ... one day! Give me ... wait--for your own sake,
not mine who never, never dream of being worth such a gift ... but for
your own sense of justice, and to _say_, so as my heart shall hear,
that you were wrong and are no longer so, give me so much of