. . . I want to say something, through the "Post," of the abominable nuisance of the railroad whistle. I wrote once while you were gone, and Nordhoff (how do you spell him?) did n't publish my letter, but only introduced some of it in a paragraph of his own. If I write again, I shall want your imprimatur. This horrible shriek, which tears all our nerves to pieces, and the nerves of all the land, except Cummington and such lovely retirements, is altogether unnecessary; a lower tone would answer just as well. It does on the Hudson River Road. To his Daughters. ST. DAVID'S, Oct. 15, 1868. . . . YOUR letter came yesterday, and was very satisfactory in the upshot; that is, you got there. But, pest on railroad cars I they are mere torture-chambers, with the additional chance, as Johnson said of the ship, of being land-wrecked. Some people like 'em, though. And there are dangers everywhere. The other day-a high windy day--a party went to the mountain, and had like to have been blown off from the top. But they said it was beautiful. I don't doubt, if the whole bunch had been tumbled over and rolled down to the bottom, they would all have jumped up, exclaiming, "Beautiful! [303] beautiful!" People so like to have it thought they have had a good time. One day they went up and all got as wet as mountain--no, as marsh--rats; and that was the most "lovely time" they have had this summer. Girls, I have a toothache to-day! It 's easier now, or I should not be writing. But pain, what a thing it is! The king of all misery, I think, is pain. It is a part of you, and does n't lie outside; a thing to be met and mastered with healthy faculties. You can't fight with it, as you can with poverty, bankruptcy, mosquitoes, a smoky chimney, and the like. I can't be thankful enough that I have had, through my life, so little pain. What I shall do with it, if it comes, I don't know. Perhaps I need it for what Heine speaks of; that is, to make me "a man." I am afraid I am a chicken-hearted fellow. But I cannot help thinking that different constitutions take that visitation very differently. To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D. ST. DAVID'S, Jan. 18, 1869.