University of Virginia Library

LETTERS.

TO MRS. H. LINCOLN.[1]

DOES not my friend think me a stupid girl, when
she has kindly offered to correspond with me, that
I should be so senseless as not to accept the offer?
Senseless and stupid I would confess myself, and
that to the greatest degree, if I did not foresee the
many advantages I shall receive from corresponding
with a lady of your known prudence and understanding.

I gratefully accept your offer; although I may be
charged with vanity in pretending to entertain you
with my scrawls; yet I know your generosity is such,

that, like a kind parent, you will bury in oblivion
all my imperfections. I do not aim at entertaining.
I write merely for the instruction and edification
which I shall receive, provided you honor me with
your correspondence.

Your letter I received, and, believe me, it has not
been through forgetfulness, that I have not before
this time returned you my sincere thanks for the kind
assurance you then gave me of continued friendship.
You have, I hope, pardoned my suspicions; they
arose from love. What persons in their right senses
would calmly, and without repining or even inquiring
into the cause, submit to lose their greatest temporal
good and happiness? for thus the divine, Dr. Young,
looks upon a true friend, when he says,

Who, that has once been favored with your friendship,
can be satisfied with the least diminution of it?
Not those who value it according to its worth.

You have, like king Ahasuerus, held forth, though
not a golden sceptre, yet one more valuable, the
sceptre of friendship, if I may so call it. Like Esther,
I would draw nigh and touch it. Will you
proceed and say, "What wilt thou?" and "What
is thy request? it shall be even given thee to the
half of my heart." Why, no. I think I will not
have so dangerous a present, lest your good man
should find it out and challenge me; but, if you

please, 1 '11 have a place in one corner of it, a place
well guarded and fortified, or still I shall fear being
jostled out by him. Now do not deny my request
on purpose to make me feel the weight of your
observation, "that we are often disappointed when
we set our minds upon that which is to yield us
great happiness." I know it too well already. Daily
experience teaches me that truth.

And now let me ask you, my friend, whether you
do not think, that many of our disappointments and
much of our unhappiness arise from our forming
false notions of things and persons. We strangely
impose upon ourselves; we create a fairy land of
happiness. Fancy is fruitful and promises fair, but,
like the dog in the fable, we catch at a shadow, and
when we find the disappointment, we are vexed, not
with ourselves, who are really the impostors, but with
the poor, innocent thing or person of whom we have
formed such strange ideas. When this is the case,
I believe we always find, that we have enjoyed more
pleasure in the anticipation than in the real enjoyment
of our wishes.

Dr. Young says, "Our wishes give us not our
wishes." Some disappointments are, indeed, more
grievous than others. Since they are our lot, let us
bear them with patience. That person, that cannot
bear a disappointment, must not live in a world so
changeable as this, and 't is wise it should be so; for,
were we to enjoy a continual prosperity, we should
be too firmly attached to the world ever to think of
quitting it, and there would be room to fear, that we

should be so far intoxicated with prosperity as to
swim smoothly from joy to joy, along life's short current,
wholly unmindful of the vast ocean, Eternity.

If I did not know that it would be adding to the
length of my letter, I might make some excuse for
it; but that and another reason will hinder me.

You bid me tell one of my sparks (I think that
was the word) to bring me to see you. Why! I
believe you think they are as plenty as herrings,
when, alas! there is as great a scarcity of them as
there is of justice, honesty, prudence, and many
other virtues. I 've no pretensions to one. Wealth,
wealth is the only thing that is looked after now.
'T is said Plato thought, if Virtue would appear to
the world, all mankind would be enamoured with
her, but now interest governs the world and men
neglect the golden mean.

But, to be sober, I should really rejoice to come
and see you, but if I wait till I get a (what did you
call 'em?) I fear you '11 be blind with age.

I can say, in the length of this epistle, I 've made
the golden rule mine. Pray, my friend, do not let it
be long before you write to your ever affectionate