I
trust sincerely that your medical adviser is mistaken in supposing
you have any tendency to a pulmonary affection. Dear Ellen, that
would indeed be a calamity. I have seen enough of consumption to
dread it as one of the most insidious and fatal diseases incident to
humanity. But I repeat it, I _hope_, nay _pray_, that your alarm is
groundless. If you remember, I used frequently to tell you at school
that you were constitutionally nervous--guard against the gloomy
impressions which such a state of mind naturally produces. Take
constant and regular exercise, and all, I doubt not, will yet be
well. What a remarkable winter we have had! Rain and wind
continually, but an almost total absence of frost and snow. Has
_general_ ill health been the consequence of wet weather at Birstall
or not? With us an unusual number of deaths have lately taken place.
According to custom I have no news to communicate, indeed I do not
write either to retail gossip or to impart solid information; my
motives for maintaining our mutual correspondence are, in the first
place, to get intelligence from you, and in the second that we may
remind each other of our separate existences; without some such
medium of reciprocal converse, according to the nature of things,
_you_, who are surrounded by society and friends, would soon forget
that such an insignificant being as myself ever lived.
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