When Sully, the artist who painted the picture of me now in your possession, found that it did not give entire satisfaction, he refused to receive any payment for it, saying that he wished to have it back, because, as a work of art, it was valuable to him, and that he would execute another likeness (what a good word execute is, so applied!) upon me, instead of that you have. We have never been able to alter this determination of his, and therefore, as he will not take his money, he should have his picture back. So, Harriet, dear, pack me up, and send me to Messrs. Harrison and Latham, Liverpool; and as soon as Sully returns from England, where he now is, you shall have another and, if possible, a better likeness of me; though I do not feel very sanguine about it, for Sully's characteristic is delicacy rather than power, and mine may not be power, but certainly is not delicacy....
Alas! my dear Harriet, the little stone-pine God bless you, dear. I am ever affectionately yours, F. A. B. Philadelphia, February 6th, 1838. My Dearest Harriet, LOOKING ON THE PAST. The box and two letters arrived safely about a week ago. I read over my old journal: this returning again into the midst of old events and feelings, affected my spirits at first a good deal.... Of course this passed off, and it afforded me much amusement to look over these archives, ancient as they now almost appear to me.... It surely is wisdom most difficult of attainment, to form a correct estimate of things or people while we are under their immediate influence: the just value of character, the precise importance of events, or the true estimate of joy and sorrow, while one is subject to their action and pressure. I suppose, with my quick and excitable feelings, I shall never attain even so much of this moral power of comparison and just appreciation as others may; but it cannot be easy to anybody.... Habitual accuracy of thought and moderation of feeling, of course, will help one to conjecture how our present will look when it has become past; but the mind that is able to do this must be naturally just, and habitually trained to justice. With the majority of people, their present must always preponderate in interest; and it is right that it should, since our work is in the present, though our hopes may be in the future, as our memories and examples must be in the past. There must be some of this intense, vivid feeling about what is immediate, to enable us to do the work of now—to bear the burden, surmount the impediment, and appreciate the blessing of now. St. Paul very wisely bade us "beget a temperance in all things" (I wish he had told us how to do it). He also said, "Behold, now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." ... The medical mode of treatment in this country appears to me frightfully severe, and I should think, with subjects as delicate as average American men and women, it might occasionally be fatal. I have a violent prejudice against bleeding, and would rather take ten doses of physic, and fast ten days, than lose two ounces of my blood. Of course, in extreme cases, extreme remedies must be resorted to; but this seems to be the usual system of treatment here, and I distrust medical systems, and cannot but think that it might be safer to reduce the quality rather than the quantity of the vital fluid. Abstinence, and vegetable and mineral matters of divers kinds, seem to me natural remedies enough; but the merciless effusion of blood, because it is inflamed, rather reminds me of my school-day cutting and gashing of my chilblains, in order to obtain immediate relief from their irritation.... S——'s scarlet fever has been followed by the enlargement of one of the tonsils, which grew to such a size as to threaten suffocation, and the physician decided that it must be removed. This was done by means of a small double-barreled silver tube, through the two pipes of which a wire is passed, coming out in a loop at the other end of the instrument. This wire being passed round the tonsil, is tightened, so as to destroy its vitality in the course of four and twenty hours, during which the tube remains projecting from the patient's mouth, causing some pain and extreme inconvenience. The mode usually resorted to with adults (for this, it seems, is a frequent operation here), is cutting the tonsil off at once; but as hemorrhage sometimes results from this, which can only be stopped by cauterizing the throat, that was not to be thought of with so young a patient.... At the end of the twenty-four hours, the instrument is removed, the diseased part being effectually killed by the previous tightening of the wire. It is then left to rot off in the mouth, which it does in the course of a few days, infecting the breath most horribly, and, I should think, injuring the health by that means.... At the same time, I was attacked with a violent sore throat, perhaps a small beginning of scarlet fever of my own, and which seized, one after another, upon all our household, and for which I had a hundred leeches at once applied to my throat, which, without reducing me very much, enraged me beyond expression. No less than seven of us were ill in the house. We are now, however, thank God, all well.... I cannot obtain from our physician any explanation whatever of the cause of this swelling of the tonsils, so common here; and when, demurring about the removal of my child's, I inquired into their functions, I received just as little satisfaction. He told me that they were not ascertained, and that all that was known was, that removing them did not affect the breathing, speaking, or swallowing—with which I had to be satisfied. This uncertainty seems to me a reason against the operation; cutting away a part of the body whose functions are not ascertained, seems to me rather venturesome; but of course the baby couldn't be allowed to choke, and so we submitted to the inevitable. The disease and the remedy are common here, and may be in England, though I never heard of them before. Pray, if you know anything about either, write me what, as I cannot rest satisfied without more information....