To Sophie Peabody - Wednesday afternoon, March 6th 1839
My dearest Sophie:
I had a parting glimpse of you, Monday fore noon, at your window and that image abides by me, looking pale, and not so quiet as is your wont. I have reproached myself many times since, because I did not show my face, and then we should both have smiled; and so our reminiscences would have been sunny instead of shadowy. But I believe I was so intent on seeing you, that I forgot ill about the desirableness of being myself seen. Perhaps, after all, you did see me at least you knew that I was there. I fear that you were not quite well that morning. Do grow better and better physically, I mean, for I protest against any spiritual improvement, until I am better able to keep pace with you but do be strong, and full of life -- earthly life -- and let there be a glow in your cheeks. And sleep soundly the whole night long, and get up every morning with a feeling as if you were newly created; and I pray you to lay up a stock of fresh energy every day till we meet again; so that we may walk miles and miles, without your once needing to lean upon my arm. Not but what you shall lean upon it, as much as you choose indeed, whether you choose or not but I would feel as if you did it to lighten my footsteps, not to support your own. Am I requiring you to work a miracle within yourself? Perhaps so yet, not a greater one than I do really believe might be wrought by inward faith and outward aids. Try it, my Dove, and be as lightsome on earth as your sister doves are in the air.
Tomorrow I shall expect a letter from you; but I am almost in doubt whether to tell you that I expect it; because then your conscience will reproach you, if you should happen not to have written. I would leave you as free as you leave me. But I do wonder whether you were serious in your last letter, when you asked me whether you wrote too often, and seemed to think that you might thus interfere with my occupations. My dear Sophie, your letters are no small portion of my spiritual food, and help to keep my soul alive, when otherwise it might languish unto Death, or else become hardened and earth-in trusted, as seems to be the case with almost all the souls with whom I am in daily intercourse. They never interfere with my worldly business neither the reading nor the answering them (I am speaking of your letters, not of those "earth-incrusted" souls) for I keep them to be the treasure of my still and secret hours, such hours as pious people spend in prayer; and the communion which my spirit then holds with yours has some thing of religion in it. The charm of your letters does not depend upon their intellectual value, though that is great, but on the spirit of which they ate the utterance, and which is a spirit of wonderful eificacy. No one, whom you would deem worthy of your friendship, could enjoy so large a share of it as I do, without feeling the influence of your character throughout his own purifying hi aims and desires, enabling him to realise that this is a truer world than the feverish one around us, and teaching him how to gain daily entrance into that better world. Such, so far as I have been able to profit by it, has been your ministration to me. Did you dream what an angelic guardianship was entrusted to you? [continued the next day]
My dearest Sophie:
I had a parting glimpse of you, Monday fore noon, at your window and that image abides by me, looking pale, and not so quiet as is your wont. I have reproached myself many times since, because I did not show my face, and then we should both have smiled; and so our reminiscences would have been sunny instead of shadowy. But I believe I was so intent on seeing you, that I forgot ill about the desirableness of being myself seen. Perhaps, after all, you did see me at least you knew that I was there. I fear that you were not quite well that morning. Do grow better and better physically, I mean, for I protest against any spiritual improvement, until I am better able to keep pace with you but do be strong, and full of life -- earthly life -- and let there be a glow in your cheeks. And sleep soundly the whole night long, and get up every morning with a feeling as if you were newly created; and I pray you to lay up a stock of fresh energy every day till we meet again; so that we may walk miles and miles, without your once needing to lean upon my arm. Not but what you shall lean upon it, as much as you choose indeed, whether you choose or not but I would feel as if you did it to lighten my footsteps, not to support your own. Am I requiring you to work a miracle within yourself? Perhaps so yet, not a greater one than I do really believe might be wrought by inward faith and outward aids. Try it, my Dove, and be as lightsome on earth as your sister doves are in the air.
Tomorrow I shall expect a letter from you; but I am almost in doubt whether to tell you that I expect it; because then your conscience will reproach you, if you should happen not to have written. I would leave you as free as you leave me. But I do wonder whether you were serious in your last letter, when you asked me whether you wrote too often, and seemed to think that you might thus interfere with my occupations. My dear Sophie, your letters are no small portion of my spiritual food, and help to keep my soul alive, when otherwise it might languish unto Death, or else become hardened and earth-in trusted, as seems to be the case with almost all the souls with whom I am in daily intercourse. They never interfere with my worldly business neither the reading nor the answering them (I am speaking of your letters, not of those "earth-incrusted" souls) for I keep them to be the treasure of my still and secret hours, such hours as pious people spend in prayer; and the communion which my spirit then holds with yours has some thing of religion in it. The charm of your letters does not depend upon their intellectual value, though that is great, but on the spirit of which they ate the utterance, and which is a spirit of wonderful eificacy. No one, whom you would deem worthy of your friendship, could enjoy so large a share of it as I do, without feeling the influence of your character throughout his own purifying hi aims and desires, enabling him to realise that this is a truer world than the feverish one around us, and teaching him how to gain daily entrance into that better world. Such, so far as I have been able to profit by it, has been your ministration to me. Did you dream what an angelic guardianship was entrusted to you? [continued the next day]
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