―184―

MEMORANDA, 103

Thursday, 7th

Private & Hospital practice occupied great part
of the forenoon. Wrote letters to my sister Fanny & to
Sally Pierce. Recd. a letter from C. B. Brown. Made
considerable advance in Anacharsis[gap]

―186―

Saturday, 16th

To C. B. Brown,

It has not been in my power to reply to your last
letter till now, when it is impossible to send to you for
two or three days; & when I should not write, would
I be certain of having a more convenient moment as
much at my command.

I pass over the contents of the greater part of your
letter, as it principally relates to matters which have
been sufficiently dwelt upon, & come to that paragraph,
in which you attribute the gravity of my letter, to a
supposed melancholy of my spirits. But you are mis-
taken. No such melancholly was felt; & my solemnity
arose, solely, from the sense I entertained of the im-
portance of our understanding each other, & the earnest
desire I felt to render all future explanations unneces-
sary. I experience, for the most part, a temperate flow
of spirits; & tho’ I find occasional causes of dejection,
in the observation & contemplation of my own ignorance
& weakness, I do not often suffer myself to be greatly
depressed thereby.

You wish for information concerning your friends,
yet can not bring yourself to the communication of
particulars relative to your own affairs. My several
questions still remain unanswered; tho’ my desire to
know how you are? what are you doing? what you wish
to do? What is proposed for you to do? & What you
expect to do?—continues as vivid & anxious as ever.
To give you an example of what is becoming in a
friend, on occasions such as these, I shall be somewhat
minute in recounting my own procedures; not only that
I may satisfy your friendly inquiries, but to the inducing
of you to return the like to me—tho’ there is nothing
in my manner of life particularly interesting.