what it may be, and at times through my mind there passes the faney—strange, absurd, incredible—but still deludes for the duration of a flash of lightning, and which makes every nerve in my body quiver, this idea that you do know. . . .
Poor Dick! Even to this point your life has intertwined itself with mine, and, thanks to you, I feel again something of that sweetness which for years I haven't felt,—the pleasure that comes to the spirit from the caress given to the little and the weak, by which their fate is in our hands, repeating the affectionate language he hears in babyhood, and giving the predestined caress when infancy no longer exists in the house. The caress of the parent is the child's fortune. In the sleepless hours of the night when I try to avoid thoughts from the present, past, and future, and from every thing which can hold the mind upon the realities of life, it terrifies me that there is need of taking refuge in fancies that are outside of humanity and it is in thoughts of you that I find the refuge; and what you seem to me, of the human spectre and that if I entertain myself with the image I forget the world and am quieted; you
