interpret my silence into a decay of affection, especially as your
behaviour has always been such as rather to increase than diminish
it. Don't imagine, because I am a bad correspondent, that I can
ever prove an unkind friend and brother. I must do myself the
justice to tell you that my affections are naturally very fixed and
constant; and if I had ever reason of complaint against you (of
which, by-the-bye, I have not the least shadow), I am conscious of
so many defects in myself as dispose me to be not a little
charitable and forgiving.

"It gives me the truest heart-felt satisfaction to hear you have a
good kind husband, and are in easy contented circumstances; but were
they otherwise, that would only awaken and heighten my tenderness
towards you. As our good and tender-hearted parents did not live to
receive any material testimonies of that highest human gratitude I
owed them (than which nothing could have given me equal pleasure),
the only return I can make them now is by kindness to those they
left behind them. Would to God poor Lizy had lived longer, to have
been a farther witness of the truth of what I say and that I might
have had the pleasure of seeing once more a sister who so truly
deserved my esteem and love! But she is happy, while we must toil a
little longer here below: let us, however, do it cheerfully and
gratefully, supported by the pleasing hope of meeting you again on a
safer shore, where to recollect the storms and difficulties of life
will not perhaps be inconsistent with that blissful state. You did
right to call your daughter by her name: for you must needs have
had a particular tender friendship for one another, endeared as you
were by nature, by having passed the affectionate years of your
youth together: and by that great softener and engager of hearts,
mutual hardship. That it was in my power to ease it a little, I