"Lord of the Isles." ... I do not think I shall ever go to college. I
can scarcely bear the thought of living upon Uncle Robert for four years
longer. How happy I should be to be able to say, "I am Lord of myself!"
You may cut off this part of my letter, and show the other to Uncle
Richard. Do write me some letters in skimmed milk. [The shy spirit finds
it thus hard, even thus early, to be under possible surveillance in his
epistolary musings, and wants to write invisibly.] I must conclude, as I
am in a "monstrous hurry!"

Your affectionate brother, NATH. HATHORNE.

P. S. The most beautiful poetry I think I ever saw begins:--

"She's gone to dwell in Heaven, my lassie,
She's gone to dwell in Heaven:
Ye're ow're pure quo' a voice aboon
For dwalling out of Heaven."

It is not the words, but the thoughts. I hope you have read it, as I
know you would admire it.

As to the allusion to college, it is but a single ray let into the
obscurity of a season when the sensitive, sturdy, proud young heart must
have borne many a vigil of vexatious and bitter revery. And this must
not be left out in reckoning the grains and scruples that were
compounding themselves into his inner consciousness. But at last he
struck a balance, wisely, among his doubts; and in the fall of 1821 he
went to Bowdoin to become one of the famous class with Longfellow and
Cheever, the memory of which has been enwreathed with the gentle verse
of "Morituri Salutamus,"--a fadeless garland. In "Fanshawe," an