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Brownville June 22 1844

Dear Brother

It is a long time since I have either written to, or received a letter from you, though I believe I have done my duty rather better than you, for I wrote you one letter from Warwick, and a piece of another just before your last visit at home. I was sorry it happened so that I saw so little of you, when you were at home: I have scarcely seen you for a year, and one's feelings and habits of thoughts sometimes alter rapidly, - and undergo such transitions at your susceptible age, that ere long I shall scarcely feel that I am acquainted with you as a sister should be, - an elder sister, - with that interior apartment of the thoughts and feelings, which alone furnishes the key to the character.  If we are ourselves duly acquainted with this inner chamber' of the soul' we shall find frequent occasion to employ the true light of experience, to correct false estimates, erroneous impressions, and unwarrantable conclusions, and, though this is especially the case, in early youth, yet I suppose we can at almost any period of our lives, in taking a retrospect of a few years, find our views of things materially changed; not indeed in the immutable principles of mirth and duty, but in the views we take of the various external circumstances influencing our conduct: and well for us it is, if we are thus instructed and disciplined by all the scenes through which we are professing, - and led on,