Friday Morning, April 20th.
What does it signify? Why may not I visit you
days as well as nights? I no sooner close my eyes,
than some invisible being, swift as the Alborack of
Mahomet, bears me to you,—I see you, but cannot
make myself visible to you. That tortures me, but
it is still worse when I do not come, for I am then
haunted by half a dozen ugly sprites. One will
catch me and leap into the sea; another will carry
me up a precipice like that which Edgar describes
in Lear, then toss me down, and, were I not then
light as the gossamer, I should shiver into atoms;
another will be pouring down my throat stuff worse
than the witches' broth in Macbeth. Where I shall
be carried next I know not, but I would rather have
the smallpox by inoculation half a dozen times than
be sprited about as I am. What say you? Can
you give me any encouragement to come? By the
time you receive this I hope from experience you
will be able to say, that the distemper is but a trifle.
Think you I would not endure a trifle for the pleasure
of seeing you? Yes, were it ten times that
trifle, I would. But my own inclinations must not
be followed,—to duty I sacrifice them. Yet, O my
mamma, forgive me if I say, you have forgot or
never knew—but hush, and do you excuse me
that something I promised you, since it was a speech
more undutiful than that which I just now stopped
myself in. For the present, good bye.
