"_March 15._ What changes a few days may produce in one's prospects! Little could I think, a week ago, that the conclusion of this letter was to tell you, that in less than another week I should be floating on the vast ocean, on my way to England. But so it is, and I hope that the suddenness of the determination to go has not shut from my eyes any very important consideration against it. It seems to me like a dream, for it is only in my dreams that I have ever thought of it as a possibility. I have wished to see my relations there, having always kept up a constant correspondence with them, and felt very much interested in them; but since my father's death, I have viewed the accomplishment of this wish as an impossibility. But now that so good an opportunity has offered, I cannot hesitate to accept it. I seem to hang so loosely on the world, that it is of little importance where I am, as it regards duties, and it is an advantage to enlarge one's ideas, which I feel ought to be improved. To tell you all that I feel at leaving home would be impossible; it is a most solemn undertaking, and when I glance at the possibilities connected with such a step, it almost overwhelms me. "I wish I could see every one of you once more. My heart is indeed too full to tell you half that I wish. "Yours most affectionately, "M. L. P" * * * * * "_Boston, March 13, 1824._ "MY DEAR N----: