"Brush Hill, September 22, 1819.
"It is now a month since the date of your last letter, during which time I think I have at least once written you; but our intercourse is now so different from what I would desire at this peculiarly eventful period, that it seems as if I did nothing, if I do not tell you every day how much depends on its events. I have been with you in a happy vision, and awake to the sad disappointment that it is but a dream, and to the consciousness that for a long time my unfruitful pen will be my only means of communication. It would be weak to repine at what is inevitable; I will not give way to it. How often have you told me that you were almost tempted to pray for trial, that you might know the true state of your religious life, that you might have your faith put to the test, and the veil of self-deception taken from your eyes! Often have I prayed that, whenever it should please the Disposer of all things to send to you sorrow and affliction, you might find strength and support where least expected, not from your own resources, but in that arm which is mighty to save to the uttermost all who seek. It is not, however, simply in the belief that whatever He appoints is right, that you are to receive his dispensations; difficult as is the task, we must not rest satisfied with ourselves until we have learned to receive with cheerful acquiescence what the world calls trials; until we have learned to view all events as tending to the same great end, and be thankful for what is denied, as well as what is received; knowing that there is but one great object in each. This may at first seem too high an aim, even above human powers to attain. But it calls not on us to give up natural feeling, only to guide it aright, and the higher our standard of excellence is fixed, the greater will be our efforts to attain it, and our success unquestionably proportioned to it.
"But why talk to you of what you have already more knowledge? Forgive me; I lost, in the interest I felt in your present happiness, the remembrance that you were not in want of counsel on a subject on which you have already experienced enough to feel its importance. But do not, my dear friend, look only on the dark side of the picture; do not suffer your mind to lose its activity, because confined at present to one subject. It is not to contract our feelings, but to expand and teach them to enter into the feelings of others, that we are made thus to experience what it is to suffer. Should it not quicken our efforts to alleviate, to our utmost endeavor, those who are tried also, and by a cheerful example lighten the hearts of fellow-sufferers? I have felt, and know therefore too well, the tendency of severe trial to enervate the mind, and lead us insensibly to give up our ambition to act on any other subject; but our general duties are not the less imposing, because a particular one requires more attention, nor are we to give way for a moment to the impulse of self-indulgence, because we feel any peculiar right to it.... All this is unnecessary, but you can conceive how deeply I feel interested in the result of this great trial of your Christian faith. I know its difficulties, therefore can appreciate its triumphs.
"Mary."
"Boston, 1819.
"I leave the dismal beginning of a letter, intended to excite your compassion for my suffering under the confinement of a cold, and it would be rather mal apropos, after what has passed, to proceed in due form to give an account of myself during the long period since I last saw you. But in order to preserve the unity of time and place, I must first revert to the accident which brought us together so opportunely. I will not pretend to defend the prudence of the action, but acknowledge it was rather the impulse of strong desire to give some one a little pleasure, than the sober dictate of reason, and I felt that, in M——'s solitary state, she would be glad to see any one. I know it was wrong in one point of view, but right in another. I was rewarded for a severe sickness, as far as regarded my own sufferings, should one have ensued. I had a very pleasant ride, and became more acquainted with J—— than I could in any other way. I was agreeably surprised to find in his conversation so much depth of thought and knowledge of mankind. I am glad of any opportunity to extend my acquaintance with character, in its infinite variety. There is no human knowledge, I am persuaded, which has so great an influence on our happiness. We learn to estimate ourselves more justly, and in the formation of our own characters we are enabled to discriminate between right and wrong more accurately; for in nothing are we more liable to confound them, than as respects our own feelings and motives. Is it not wilful blindness that leads us so often to ridicule in others what we unconsciously practise ourselves? Why are we not as cautious to ascertain the motives of the conduct of others as of our own? We console ourselves, when we have done any thing which to the eyes of the world appears weak and foolish, with the thought that our motives are good, and with a consciousness of having done what was right. All else is of little importance; but did we believe that our friends were as much influenced by appearances, in their judgment of us, as we are in ours of them, I doubt if the approving smile of conscience would always compensate for the loss of the good opinion of those we love. Let us not, then, judge solely by the conduct of any what are their real characters; peculiar circumstances may prevent even our most intimate friends from disclosing to us their particular reasons for every action; but in that case, if it be a tried friend, it were surely a proof of friendship to believe that it is at least felt by him to be right. And with regard to people in general, let charity have its perfect work, and let us think all are free from deliberate faults, till we have good reason to suppose otherwise. This is, perhaps, if understood literally, rather too liberal a plan for this world of sin and wickedness; but as far as is consistent with reason, and our previous knowledge of men and manners, is it not just to judge of all as we would be judged? I have felt the want of this spirit of impartial justice, and speak from experience in some respects; in one, I hope never to be tried. I have been what you call mysterious; could you understand me, you would, I am sure, approve. Believe me, I am not governed by caprice in my treatment of friends; if any thing may have appeared so, there has always been a motive, and I feel that I may confidently rely on your friendship for all charitable construction....
"I am in a sad state. I long to see you, in hopes of procuring some remedy in your better regulated mind. I am so much under the dominion of certain sickly feelings of late, that I begin to think my mind will never recover its healthy tone again; active employment for the good of others is the only preventive for such disorders. I have not at present any prospect of such a means towards my own recovery, but trust the vital energy of my being is not quite extinct, and that ere long it will rise and subdue the weaker powers.... I have just thought that it is the spring-like feeling of the day that has such a weakening effect on my mind. Why do we indulge so much in idealism, instead of the real pleasure of our existence? I have no opinion of this giving way to imagination in our estimate of life.
"Mary."
In the month of October a death occurred which awakened all her sympathy, and the sympathy and sorrow of a large community. The Rev. John E. Abbot, whose life and character Henry Ware has made familiar to us all, died in October, at his father's in Exeter, where Mary's friend was staying as a relative. To both of them he had been a Christian helper when they most needed Christian counsel and encouragement. His short life was, indeed, a blessing to all who knew him, and his death full of "joy and peace in believing." Again was the pen taken, and solace offered.
"Boston, October 15, 1819.
"I attempted, my dear friend, to write you on Tuesday, for I felt then that, all being over, I could calmly write of what had passed, and direct your feelings and my own to the future. But I knew from experience that a few days' delay would find you more in want of a letter; as the necessary exertion which attends a scene like that you have passed through occupies the whole mind while it is necessary to support it, but leaves, when it is passed, a vacuity which needs some external power to fill it. Perhaps I too easily found in this an excuse for leaving my letter unfinished, and now that I review it, I blush at my own weakness. I sought to relieve my own heart, instead of strengthening yours. I have been with you every moment since I last wrote you, and too fully realized all that you have suffered. At the moment I was writing you, that pure spirit was taking its flight. I felt it as by intuition, and needed not further confirmation. But it was a relief to know that his blessed spirit was for ever beyond the reach of pain and anguish; that it was exalted to its native home, there to realize all that his brightest hopes could anticipate of a glorious immortality.
"I feel an almost total inability to write you on this subject. Could I talk to you, there would be time to enlarge on all the thoughts which it suggests. But they are so various, so interesting, so overpowering, that I know not on which to dwell. His virtues are too deeply imprinted on our hearts to receive any additional weight by enumeration. We can only go forward with them to that world where they shall meet a reward proportionate to their value. The remembrance of his character, while it awakens every emotion of affection which he excited while on earth, sheds on the heart a light which unfolds to the eye of faith its glorious perfection in heaven. Nothing in him can have escaped the mind of one so closely connected with him; friends need not to be reminded of what is imprinted in indelible characters on their hearts. But the thought that what we so loved and cherished is gone for ever from us, that the form by which we have held communion with the spirit is hid for ever from our view, the chilling realities of death and decay, as they appeal to our purest earthly feelings, are the most difficult to contend with. Our brightest visions of the future have a most powerful drawback in the horror with which nature shrinks from the sad appendages of death.
"It is this, I think, which more than any thing else makes us look forward to our own dissolution with instinctive dread, and leads us to avoid, if possible, every thing that reminds us of it. But when we view it as it really is, but a step in the ceaseless progression which is to carry us on to eternity, as a mere change of the external habitation of our spirits, a removal of the greatest impediments in our progress towards perfection, then, indeed, it loses all its terror, and we think of our friends who have passed through it as absent only in body, but present in spirit. Our own souls, though still connected with an earthly load, form by their derivation from heaven a part of the spiritual world, and in proportion as they become purified from the corruption of the world, they approach the state of those beatified beings who have finished their course. And therefore, though separated from them in this world, we are allied to them more closely than earthly ties could bind us, and must patiently wait for the fulfilment of our Father's plans for our joyful removal to them. This is, indeed, a new incentive to exertion, to prepare ourselves for this change. I have feared it might supersede a still higher motive; but how far it may be permitted to influence us, I dare not determine. That our earthly affections may be a means of leading us to the Creator of them and of all our powers of thinking and feeling, I believe must be true, or they would not have been given us as sources of such pure enjoyment here. But their tendency to make us forget all other considerations, to absorb those thoughts which should be directed to higher objects, is the trial which always attends every means of worldly enjoyment we possess, and as such should be combated with our utmost powers....
"Yours, most truly,
"M. L. P."
In the summer of 1821 Mary went with her father to live in Dorchester. And the change from town to country, and from a life of business and care to the free and still enjoyment of nature, seems to have had both a favorable and unfavorable effect upon her mind. Unfavorable in part, if we may trust her own account of herself. In this account, however, there is a nearer approach to morbidness than we have before seen, and a kind of self-disparagement, which must have been sincere at the time, but was not, we think, a part of her essential character. Humble she was always; truly, deeply humble; yet no one knew better than she, or acted more upon the truth, that genuine humility says very little about itself. And the expressions of it which appear in the letters that follow were made, we are to remember, to a confiding friend, to whom she declared all that she felt, though it were but the feeling of the moment, and the next moment recalled. She says herself, in this connection,—"I believe I have given an extravagant detail of my danger; and I may be under the influence of one of those fits of distempered mind, to which I have always been prone." If this were so, it shows the more what efforts she made, and how completely she brought every such disposition under the sway of principle, so that few who knew her ever suspected, we imagine, that any effort was necessary.
But we are ourselves overstating, it may be, the disposition to which we refer. Wherever it appears, as here, it is connected with such just and exalted sentiments, that it seems incidental and unimportant.
"Dorchester, June 18, 1821.
"The first line which I date from this place is to you, my friend, to whom my first feelings, on all occasions of self-interest, turn for sympathy. Your friendly curiosity is awake to know what effect a new kind of life is to have on a character which I know you feel of some importance to yourself. I would not imply that this selfish reason is the only motive of your interest, but I seek rather to find in it some pretence for indulging myself in the egotism which is creeping over me; and which led me to this desk for relief. How much will one short week of quiet reflection teach of our own hearts! How deceived are we, if we imagine we know ourselves thoroughly, when we have been but partially exposed to that change of circumstances and situation which alone can develop character even to one's self! I have found, indeed, just what I anticipated, that the change from constant activity to perfect stillness and inaction would of course produce a vacuity which time and habit would alone overcome; but I knew not the whole weakness of my mind. In the bustle of a busy life (idly busy, perhaps, but not the less exciting) I had almost lost sight of my natural propensities. Accustomed to find objects to occupy my powers wherever I turned, I mistook the simple love of being employed for real energy of mind, and therefore did not even apprehend the want of power to direct these energies to whatever I pleased. But it is not as I thought. My natural turn of mind (if I may so call what is perhaps more a weakness of heart) is for that calm, saddened view of things, which seeks enjoyment from the contemplative in character, and lives rather on the food of imagination than reality. I never found in words a more accurate description of the prevailing mood of my natural feelings than in that exquisite little poem, 'I'm pleased, and yet I'm sad,'—yet not of an uneasy, discontented temperament, but simply inclined to the purest refinement of melancholy. Trials which called for vigor of mind and cheerfulness of manner, a situation whose duties required the full employment of time which might otherwise have been wasted in cultivating this propensity, and perhaps a little pride lest those who could not understand it should discover it, and I hope a principle which taught me to wage war with what must interfere with higher duties,—all these combined to stifle the propensity, and I sometimes thought had almost extinguished it. But now, removed from those occupations which demanded thought as well as action, thrown entirely upon myself, with every thing around to inspire the enthusiastic indulgence of fancy, my imagination has suddenly taken the reins, and I find it will not be without a struggle that reason and principle will recover them.
"I suppose I must set about some new study or dry book, if I cannot find some animate subject to interest and fix my mind. There is a little deaf and dumb girl just opposite us, and if I knew the process I would teach her to read. I must have something to do which will rouse my mind to exertion. I have employment enough, but it is not of my mind, and that is unfortunately one which will retrograde if it does not progress. I am delighted with our situation, and cannot describe to you the sensations of first realizing that I am living in the pure, unconfined atmosphere of nature. It has a power, which I hope familiarity will never efface, of elevating the heart to Him whose 'hand I see, wrought in each flower, inscribed on every tree.' It is a privilege which I hope I shall fully estimate, to be thus reminded at every glance of the love and power of our Father in heaven. I am grateful for that goodness which has appointed me so much of the purest enjoyment of life, and I would testify it by devoting all my powers to his best service. I was not made for solitude of heart, and I would find all that my heart requires in the love of divine perfection. I think Foster will do me good,—'On the Epithet Romantic.'
"I have just been taking a delightful walk, as the sun was setting gloriously, and I think if you were only with me I should enjoy it tenfold. I wish you could arrange matters to come out with father one night before you go, and we will go to Milton.
"Mary."