mesmeric experience and decide whether the outrageous compliment to
E.B.B. or the experiment on M. Vandeleur [Valdemar] goes furthest to
prove him mad. There is poetry in the man, though, now and then, seen
between the great gaps of bathos.... 'Politian' will make you
laugh--as the 'Raven' made _me_ laugh, though with something in it
which accounts for the hold it took upon people such as Mr. N.P.
Willis and his peers--it was sent to me from _four_ different quarters
besides the author himself, before its publication in this form, and
when it had only a newspaper life. Some of the other lyrics have power
of a less questionable sort. For the author, I do not know him at
all--never heard from him nor wrote to him--and in my opinion, there
is more faculty shown in the account of that horrible mesmeric
experience (mad or not mad) than in his poems. Now do read it from the
beginning to the end. That '_going out_' of the hectic, struck me very
much ... and the writhing _away_ of the upper lip. Most
horrible!--Then I believe so much of mesmerism, as to give room for
the full acting of the story on me ... without absolutely giving full
credence to it, understand.

Ever dearest, you could not think me in earnest in that letter? It was
because I understood you so perfectly that I felt at liberty for the
jesting a little--for had I not thought of _that_ before, myself, and
was I not reproved for speaking of it, when I said that I was content,
for my part, even _so_? Surely you remember--and I should not have
said it if I had not felt with you, felt and known, that 'there is,
with us, less for the future to give or take away than in the ordinary
cases.' So much less! All the happiness I have known has come to me
through you, and it is enough to live for or die in--therefore living
or dying I would thank God, and use that word '_enough_' ... being
yours in life and death. And always understanding that if either of us
should go, you must let it be this one here who was nearly gone when
she knew you, since I could not bear--

Now see if it is possible to write on this subject, unless one laughs
to stop the tears. I was more wise on Friday.

Let me tell you instead of my sister's affairs, which are so publicly
talked of in this house that there is no confidence to be broken in
respect to them--yet my brothers only see and hear, and are told
nothing, to keep them as clear as possible from responsibility. I may
say of Henrietta that h