"O, how the business of life thickens as one goes onward! I sometimes wish I knew whether there is ever to be such a thing as _rest_ in this life for me, wherein to breathe a little more freely, and feel it right to forget, for a moment at least, the care of the earthly. Or I should like still better to know how far it is practicable to keep one's mind at ease, and yet do all that ought to be done. It does not seem as if it could have been intended that we should be the careworn drudges that most of us are, hardly giving ourselves time to enjoy the sight of the beautiful world around us, or know any thing of that within us. I have often great misgivings upon the subject, much doubting whether it is not, after all, more my bad management than the necessity of the case, which makes me so pressed from want of time to do what I wish. But I have looked around and within in vain for a remedy for the evil. "I am just where I was a year ago, only a little more involved from having one child more, and that one that cannot be tended by any one who is not tolerably sizable herself. This is not as it should be, (not my baby, but my incessant occupation,) and I feel the evil effect upon my intellectual and physical too,--the one becomes utterly empty, the other too crowded. Thought is free, happily, but one uses up the material for thought if not refreshed by outward subjects occasionally; or rather one's thoughts take too uniform a track, and become morbid. I should like to peep into some other person's mind and see how the land lies; one is apt to think that no one is as wicked as himself, but perhaps the same causes lead to the same results. It would be a comfort to know, upon the old principle, that 'misery loves company.' Yours, "MARY."