150 INTRODUCTION
"Chapel" (I intend a sarcasm on no one). So, as you have heretofore found me not forgetful because I did not often write, you may now deem me not unfriendly because I do not express coincidence of opinion. Nevertheless, I am certain of the force of what I say. But perhaps, doubtful of sympathy, you have omitted to intrust me with all you would confide in another. Yet I know not — perhaps the whole is a transient impulse. But, if you can modify my opinion, do so ; for I am ever a learner, and I believe, from all the habits of my life, incapable of maintaining prejudice against proof.
And now, my dear friend, I advert to a former letter in which you speak of having received an unfriendly letter from a person whom you have loved. Both you and I, being irritable, seek the calm ; and, though I confess that calmness seemed to reach coldness in that person, I hope that, if anything deserving the name of friendship exists between you, you will not throw it away. If it does not exist, that is another thing. The recent deaths in both our families remind me to say that we shall not always be together. Which of us goes first, we know not. In order of time, it should be I. But, as the majority of mankind die even while children, and as persons are still more likely to live between forty and sixty than between twenty and forty, not even a guess can be formed in regard to it. None of your family easily make new friends, and, if I should be the first to depart, I can easily see that you (unlike me, who have lost at an early age my best and dearest friends) may even lose in me the first person out of your own family whom you much loved. But, even if I survive to you, the time is near, and must soon come, when in the natural order of things you must lose others, and, as we do not easily replace friends, I consider their estrange-
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