University of Virginia Library

LETTER LXII.

Be not anxious for me, Mary. I hope to experience
very speedy relief from the wholesome
airs that perpetually fan this spot. Your apprehension
from the influence of these scenes on my
fancy are groundless. They breathe nothing over
my soul but delicious melancholy. I have done
expecting and repining, you know. Four years
have passed since I was here: since I met your
brother, under these shades.

I have already visited every spot which has
been consecrated by our interviews. I have
found the very rail which, as I well remember,
we disposed into a bench, at the skirt of a wood,
bordering a stubble field. The same pathway
through the thicket, where I have often walked
with him, I now traverse morning and night.

Be not uneasy, I repeat, on my account. My
present situation is happier than the rest of the
world can afford. I tell you, I have done repining.
I have done sending forth my views into
an earthly futurity. Anxiety, I hope, is now at
an end with me.

What do you think I design to do? I assure
you it is no new scheme. Ever since my mother's
death, I have thought of it at times. It
has been my chief consolation. I never mentioned
it to you because I knew you would not
approve it. It is this.

To purchase this farm, and take up my abode
upon it for the rest of my life. I need not become
farmer, you know. I can lett the ground
to some industrious person, upon easy terms. I
can add all the furniture and appendages to this
mansion, which my convenience requires.
Luckily Sandford has for some time, entertained
thoughts of parting with it, and I believe he
could not find a more favourable purchaser.

You will tell me that the fields are sterile;
the barn small: the stable crazy; the woods
scanty. These would be powerful objections
to a mere tiller of the earth, but they are none
to me.

'Tis true, it is washed by a tide-water. The
bank is low and the surrounding country sandy
and flat, and you may think I ought rather to
prefer the beautiful variety of hill and dale,
luxuriant groves, and fertile pastures which
abound in other parts of the country. But you
know, my friend, the mere arrangement of inanimate
objects, wood, grass, and rock, is nothing.
It owes its power of bewitching us to the memory,

the fancy and the heart. No spot of
earth can possibly team with as many affecting
images as this; for here it was—

But my eyes already overflow. In the midst
of these scenes, remembrance is too vivid to allow
me thus to descant on them. At a distance
I could talk of them without that painful emotion,
and now it would be useless repetition.
Have I not, more than once, related to you every
dialogue; described every interview?

God bless you, dear Mary, and continue to
you all your present happiness.

Don't forget to write to me. Perhaps some
tidings may reach you—down! thou flattering
hope! thou throbbing heart, peace! He is gone.
These eyes will never see him more. Had an
angel whispered the fatal news in my wakeful
ear, I should not more firmly believe it.

And yet—but I must not heap up disappointments
for myself. Would to heaven there was no
room for the least doubt: that, one way or the
other, his destiny was ascertained.

How agreeable is your intelligence, that Mr.
Cartwright has embarked after taking cheerful
leave of you. It grieves me, my friend, that
you do not entirely approve of my conduct towards
that man. I never formally attempted to
justify myself. 'Twas a subject on which I
could not give utterance to my thoughts. How
irksome is blame from those we love! there is
instantly suspicion that blame is merited. A
new process of self-defence is to be gone over,
and ten to one, but that after all our efforts,
there are some dregs at the bottom of the cup.

I was half willing to found my excuse on the
hope of the wanderer's return; but I am too
honest to urge a false plea. Beside, I know
that certainty, in that respect, would make no
difference, and would it not be fostering in him
a hope, that my mind might be changed in
consequence of being truly informed respecting
your brother's fate?

I persuade myself that a man of Cartwright's
integrity and generosity cannot be made lastingly
unhappy by me. I know but of one human
being more excellent. Though his sensibility
be keen, I trust to his fortitude.

It is true, Mary, what you have heard. Cartwright
was my school-fellow. When we grew
to an age, that made it proper to frequent separate
schools, he did not forget me. The schools
adjoined each other, and he used to resist all
the enticements of prison-base and cricket, for
the sake of waiting at the door of our school,
till it broke up, and then accompanying me
home.

These little gallant offices made him quite
singular among his compeers, and drew on him
and on me, a good deal of ridicule. But he
did not mind it. I thought him, and every
body else thought him, a most amiable and engaging
youth, though only twelve or thirteen
years old.

'Tis impossible to say what might have happened,
had he not gone with his mother to
Europe; or rather, it is likely, I think, that
our fates, had he staid among us, would in
time have been united. But he went away when
I was scarcely fourteen. At parting, I remember,

we shed a great-many tears and exchanged
a great many kisses; and promises not to
forget. And that promise never was broken by
me. He was always dear to my remembrance.

Time has only improved all the graces of
the boy. I will not conceal from you, Mary,
that nothing but a preoccupied heart has been an
obstacle to his wishes. If that impediment had
not existed, my reverence for his worth, my
gratitude for his tenderness would have made
me comply. I will even go further; I will say
to you, though my regard to his happiness will
never suffer me to say it to him, that if three
years more pass away, and I am fully assured that
your brother's absence will be perpetual, and
Cartwright's happiness is still in my hands—
that then—I possibly may—but I am sure
that, before that time, his hand and his heart
will be otherwise disposed of. Most sincerely
shall I rejoice at the last event.

All are well here. My friend is as good
natured and affectionate as ever; and sings as
delightfully and plays as adroitly. She humours
me with all my favorite airs, twice a day. We
have no strangers; no mpertinents to intermeddle
in our conversations and mar our enjoyments.

You know what turn my studies have taken,
and what books I have brought with me. 'Tis
remarkable what unlooked for harvests arise
from small and insignificant germs. My affections
have been the stimulants to my curiosity. What
was it induced me to procure maps and charts,
and explore the course of the voyager over seas
and round capes? there was a time when these

objects were wholly frivolous and unmeaning in
my eyes, but now they gain my whole attention.

When I found that my happiness was embarked
with your brother in a tedious and perilous
voyage, was it possible to forbear collecting
all the information attainable respecting his
route, and the incidents likely to attend it? I
got maps and charts and books of voyages, and
found a melancholy enjoyment in connecting the
incidents and objects which they presented,
with the destiny of my friend. The pursuit of
this chief and most interesting object, has
brought within view, and prompted me to
examine a thousand others, on which, without
this original inducement, I should never have
bestowed a thought.

The map of the world exists in my fancy in
a most vivid and accurate manner. Repeated
meditation on displays of Shoal, Sand-bank and
Water, has created a sort of attachment to Geography
for its own sake. I have often reflected
on the innumerable links in the chain of my
ideas between my first eager examination of
the route by sea between New-York and Tobago
and yesterday's employment, when I was
closely engaged in measuring the Marches of
Frederic acros the mountains of Bohemia.

How freakish and perverse are the rovings of
human curiosity! The surprise which Miss
Betterton betrayed, when, in answer to her inquiries,
as to what study and what book I prized
the most, you told her that I thought of little
else than of the art of moving from shore to
shore across the water, and that I pored over
Cook's voyages so much that I had gotten the

best part of them by rote, was very natural. She
must have been puzzled to conjecture what
charms one of my sex could find in the study of
maps and voyages. Once I should have been
just as much puzzled myself. Adieu.