'I never read Emerson; but the book which has had so healing an
effect on your mind must be a good one. Very enviable is the writer
whose words have fallen like a gentle rain on a soil that so needed
and merited refreshment, whose influence has come like a genial
breeze to lift a spirit which circumstances seem so harshly to have
trampled. Emerson, if he has cheered you, has not written in vain.
'May this feeling of self-reconcilement, of inward peace and
strength, continue! May you still be lenient with, be just to,
yourself! I will not praise nor flatter you, I should hate to pay
those enervating compliments which tend to check the exertions of a
mind that aspires after excellence; but I must permit myself to
remark that if you had not something good and superior in you,
something better, whether more _showy_ or not, than is often met
with, the assurance of your friendship would not make one so happy as
it does; nor would the advantage of your correspondence be felt as
such a privilege.
'I hope Mrs. Williams's state of health may soon improve and her
anxieties lessen. Blameable indeed are those who sow division where
there ought to be peace, and especially deserving of the ban of
society.
'I thank both you and your family for keeping our secret.
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