I have made slight acquaintance also with one Mrs. Lidia Emerson, who almost persuades me to be a Christian, but I fear I as often... lapse into heathenism.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thank you and Mrs. Emerson for your long kindness to me.... I have been your pensioner for nearly two years, and still left free a...s under the sky. It has been as free a gift as the sun or the summer, though I have sometimes molested you with my mean acceptance of it,--I who have failed to render even those slight services of the hand which would have been for a sign at least; and, by the fault of my nature, have failed of many better and higher services. But I will not trouble you with this, but for once thank you as well as Heaven.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The thought of you will constantly elevate my life; it will be something always above the horizon to behold, as when I look up at ...the evening star. I think I know your thoughts without seeing you, and as well here as in Concord. You are not at all strange to me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I believe a good many conversations with you were left in an unfinished state, and now indeed I don't know where ...to take them up. But I will resume some of the unfinished silence. I shall not hesitate to know you. I think of you as some elder sister of mine, whom I could not have avoided,--a sort of lunar influence,--only of such age as the moon, whose time is measured by her light. You must know that you represent to me woman, for I have not traveled very far or wide,--and what if I had?... You have helped to keep my life "on loft," as Chaucer says of Griselda, and in a better sense. You always seemed to look down on me as from some elevation,--some of your high humilities,--and I was the better for having to look up. I felt taxed not to disappoint your expectation; for could there be any accident so sad as to be respected for something better than we are? It was a pleasure even to go away from you, as it is not to meet some, as it apprised me of my high relations; and such a departure is a sort of further introduction and meeting. Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »