[195]To Mrs. David Lane.
SHEFFIELD, Oct. 19, 1847.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I cannot feel easy without knowing how little C. is
getting along. I pray you to take your pen, if you are not too busy, or
she too ill, and tell me how she is.
And now, having my pen in hand, I could and should go on and write
a letter to you, were it not that all ingenuity, fancy, liberty of
writing, is put to a complete nonplus by the uncertainty in what state
of mind my writing will find you. I must not write merrily, I would not
write sadly. I hope all is well, I fear all is not, and I know not how
to blend the two moods, though an apostle has said, "As sorrowful, yet
always rejoicing." But apostolic states of mind somehow seem to me too
great to enter into letters, and there is nothing to me more surprising
than to find in biography--Foster's, for instance--long letters
occupied with the profoundest questions in religion. If I were not
habitually engaged in the contemplation of such subjects, if I had not
another and appropriate vehicle for them, and if they did not always
seem to me too vast for a sheet or two of paper, I suppose that my
letters, too, might be wise and weighty. As it is, they are always mere
relaxations, or mere chip-pings and parings from the greater themes, at
the most. So you see that neither you nor the public lose anything by
my being a negligent and reluctant letter-writer.
Well, I shall make a serious letter, if I do not mind, about nothing,
and so doubly disprove all I have been saying. I trust C. is getting
well, but I am always anxious about that fever. Pray write a word to
relieve my [196] solicitude, which my wife shares with me, as in the
affectionate regard with which I am,
Ever yours,