"I believe that I have said to you, two or three times, how much I had calculated on your long visit, as a means of making you and Miss Pickard well acquainted.... And I am not sure that I should have said even as much as this, were it not for one circumstance, which has given me a satisfaction that I never had hoped to enjoy, and which will be increased by imparting it to you. I have known so much of the selfishness of human love, and heard so much of the sensitiveness with which women are apt to regard a former affection, that I had not dared to hope that I ever should be able to speak as I feel of former days, and the memory of my earliest love. Yet, as I longed to cherish it, and as all my present plans and feelings are interwoven with the thoughts and images of the past, it would have been an exceeding pain to me to feel that there was any reserve, or any of that--I don't know what to call it--which would compel me to hide such feelings, and seem not to have them. I cannot tell you, then, how happy I have been in finding Miss Pickard entirely above all mean and selfish feelings, which I have supposed to be so common. She enters into my views, and we have talked freely of other days; and she helps to keep me right by speaking of the pleasant impressions she used to receive from Elizabeth's character, and what she has heard of her. I wish I could go into particulars. So unexpected a communication between us has been a source of gratification to me unspeakably great; and I do not know when I have felt more truly exalted and spiritualized, than when, after such a conversation which has freed us from every selfish and earthly feeling, we have knelt down together and prayed for blessing from that world, where, I feel sure, if the departed regard those whom they left behind, there is no sorrow or displeasure at the course I am pursuing. I take pleasure in telling you this, because nothing can or shall divide me from you, or lessen that feeling in which I have so long regarded you as one of the nearest, the very nearest, to me; and I long that all who are near to me should be so to you. Best love to you, and all happiness with you and yours. Till I see you, adieu. "Yours, "HENRY." Immediately after her engagement, Mary visited her friend in Worcester; and from that place we find a very long letter, relating more to others than to herself, written in a cheerful mood, but showing how deep and sober had been her meditations on the change that was before her, of which she writes more fully in the first letter after her return to Boston. "_Worcester, February 18, 1827._ "DEAR EMMA:--