'My English friend went across the sea. She passed into her
former life, and into ties that engrossed her days. But she
has never ceased to think of me. Her thoughts turn forcibly
back to the child who was to her all she saw of the really
New World. On the promised coasts she had found only cities,
careful men and women, the aims and habits of ordinary life
in her own land, without that elegant culture which she,
probably, over-estimated, because it was her home. But in the
mind of the child she found the fresh prairie, the untrodden
forests for which she had longed. I saw in her the storied
castles, the fair stately parks and the wind laden with
tones from the past, which I desired to know. We wrote to one
another for many years;--her shallow and delicate epistles did
not disenchant me, nor did she fail to see something of the
old poetry in my rude characters and stammering speech. But we
must never meet again.

'When this friend was withdrawn I fell into a profound
depression. I knew not how to exert myself, but lay bound hand
and foot. Melancholy enfolded me in an atmosphere, as joy had
done. This suffering, too, was out of the gradual and natural
course. Those who are really children could not know such
love, or feel such sorrow. "I am to blame," said my father,
"in keeping her at home so long merely to please myself. She
needs to be with other girls, needs play and variety. She does
not seem to me really sick, but dull rather. She eats nothing,
you say. I see she grows thin. She ought to change the scene."

'I was indeed _dull_. The books, the garden, had lost all
charm. I had the excuse of headache, constantly, for not