It is partly to show how Mrs. Ware defended herself, and at the same time submitted to counsel and was grateful for admonition, and partly to show how singularly insulated she must have been in her early training and her self-formed character, that we introduce the following note, written to a lady who acted the part of a true friend. The date is not given, but the note itself shows that it was written the year of the journey to the South already mentioned, when she accompanied her husband at some risk to herself. "MY DEAR, GOOD FRIEND:-- "I cannot thank you as I would for your kind note. I have not words wherewith to picture to you the joy I feel, that there is any one human being in existence who is willing to admonish me freely. If you have told me nothing new, your words are none the less welcome, for one cannot have the truth too frequently presented to the mind and although we may have _all_ knowledge, it is not often that we can grasp it all at one glance, or even that we remember the points most useful to us at the time being. "You will not think I boast, when I say that one and all the views you present have long formed part of the rule of action by which I have _tried_ to govern myself, because I know you will easily understand the deep-searching, Argus-eyed vigilance, which one wholly self-educated almost inevitably acquires. I never have had, since I can remember, a principle of action suggested to me, or a word said to show me _why_ one action was wrong and another right. For many years a whisper of blame never reached my ears; and when at last it came like a flood upon me, there was no friendly looking-glass near to point out to me the deformity from which my mistakes arose. At ten years of age I waked up to a sense of the danger of the state of indulgence in which I was living. At thirteen, by the death of my mother, I was left wholly to my own guidance, externally as well as internally; and from that time to this I have labored night and day to know, discipline, and govern myself, as I would a child for whose soul I was responsible. Dr. Channing's sermons and conversation are the only effectual human guide I ever had, until I was married. Having no one to whom to speak, and but one friend to whom I could write upon the subject, no wonder that my habits of thought should have been more cultivated than of conversation; no wonder the whole ground of self-deception, self-distrust, self-aggrandizement, should have been gone over again and again until every root was displaced and exposed to view; though, alas! not a hundredth part eradicated. Now this is not to my point, but you will still see that you have done me good by making me feel thus loquacious and unreserved with you.