"You will forgive me for writing you just what happened to occupy my mind. It is an indulgence that I cannot resist, to be able to communicate a few of my feelings and thoughts. I fear you will think I impose too much on your goodness. "MARY." * * * * * "_Boston, August 20, 1817._ "MY DEAR MISS CUSHING:-- "There are, I believe, moments in the lives of all human beings, when, from some cause or other, the heart is saddened by a feeling of peculiar loneliness, which, though perhaps rather a disease of the imagination than the effect of real circumstances, is nevertheless irresistible. I have felt this in the gayest period of my life, and it is not strange that I should now often experience it. Leading a perfectly monotonous existence, my resources of animal spirits are not entirely sufficient to supply the call of duty and the hour of solitude too. And when evening closes, and my beloved charge is laid peacefully to rest, excitement ceases, and I am thrown on myself for pleasure. Then it is that I long to be with friends, whom I can only visit in imagination; then I long to annihilate distance, and talk with you. It is, I know, imposing on your goodness to attempt to write you under the influence of such feelings, but it is an indulgence I can hardly resist, convinced as I am that, when you are assured it is a relief to a poor solitary, your benevolent heart will pardon me. I would not convey that I am unhappy in this situation. O, no!--there is such a thing as being 'pleased, and yet sad'; and though sometimes 'The heart will feel, the tear will steal, For auld lang syne sae dear,' yet I rejoice with joy unspeakable that the present is still filled with many privileges and pleasures, and that I can with perfect trust refer the future to Him who appointeth all things in mercy. I wish most sincerely I could communicate something interesting to you, to redeem my miserable letters from the charge of perfect egotism, but I live so wholly out of the sphere of the interesting part of the world, that I am as ignorant of all that passes within it as those who know not that it exists. It is this reason which has often withheld me from writing you when indeed I wished for my own sake to indulge in it, and I think you will be fully convinced of the wisdom of my forbearance after the perusal of this. "M.L.P."