 | | which any real, appreciable sorrow strikes a terribly deep and long root. Shakespeare describes this thing, as he does everything else:
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| | "In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me,you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff't is made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn."
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| | You have struggled with it by the most rational means,an active out-of-door life, by sea voyages and severe manual labor. A
man
can fight this dragon as a woman cannot. We women are helpless,tied to places, forms, and rules,chained to our stake. We must meet him as we can.
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| | Of late I have not been able to sleep, and, lying awake all night long in darkness and misery, have asked, if
this
be life, whether an immortal existence is not a curse to be feared, rather than a blessing to be hoped, and if the wretchedness we fear in the eternal world can be worse than what we sometimes suffer now,such sinking of heart, such helplessness of fear, such a vain calling for help that never comes. Well, I will not live it over again, for I dare say you know it all too well. I think I finally wore myself out in trying to cheer poor brother Theodore's darksome way down to death. Can you wonder that he would take opium? God alone can judge people that suffer as he did, and, let people say what they please, I must, I will, think that God has some pity for the work of his hands.
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| | Now, brother, I must, I will, write to you about Emily; though you have said you never wished to hear her name again. What right had you, her brother, to give her up so, and to let the whole burden of this dreadful mystery and sorrow come down on me alone? You are not certain that she has gone astray in the worst sense that a woman can. We only know that she has broken away from us and gone,but where, how, and with whom, you cannot say, nor I. And certainly there was great excuse for her. Consider how the peculiar temperament and constitution of our family wrought upon her. Consider the temptations of her wonderful beauty,
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