"The first part of Henry's sickness he seemed quite unconscious of what was around him; torpid, and at times wandering in his expressions. But the last three weeks, although still unable to exert himself to talk,--for it tired him, he said, 'even to think,'--his mind was perfectly clear; indeed, I had reason to suppose his mind was never as much clouded to himself, as it appeared to be to us. The pressure upon his brain was so great, as to produce great difficulty of action of any kind; his ideas were often clear, but the power of finding words to convey them was paralyzed. He said little at any time, and yet I find, in surveying the whole period, that I have many satisfactory views of the whole state of his mind in relation to the change that he was making. He never had but one view of his own situation; he felt decidedly that the time for going home was come,--'the fitting time,' 'the best time'; and he was grateful that the toil of sickness and inability was at an end. And so convinced was I, that, if he should revive from that attack, it could only be to continue to suffer still more than he had done, from inability to do what he had hoped to, this autumn, for the good of his fellow-men, that I too felt that it was indeed the fitting time. And so intense was my suffering from the apprehension of his continuing, for years perhaps, in the half-paralyzed, half-torpid state in which he lay for so many weeks, that it was not only with resignation, it was with a sense of relief, that I saw the doubt was at an end, the prisoner was released. So strange is it, that that event to which I had ever looked forward as the one thing that could not be borne in life, came at last under circumstances which made it welcome! Do I live to say it, to feel it? But O the chasm left in my lot, in my heart! Who can estimate it! No one. No, 'the heart knoweth its own bitterness'; no human being can enter into it.... But I must stop. I hope to see you, or at least hear from you. "Yours with much love. "M. L. W." * * * * * "_Framingham, November 5, 1843._ "MY DEAR EMMA:--