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As to your taking so much care and labor upon yourself this winter, I think, all things considered, it is well. provides you do not overload yourself, for it must be a vast comfort to you and Lucy to be there together. The care and ward of any family however small, is hard because ever-returning, but surely, there can be no need of your doing so much in a day, as to get-all exhausted and low-spirited: it is neither wise nor economical to attempt, more than can be done without much loss of accustomed freshness and vigor. You are prone we all know to go beyond your strength, perhaps many do occasionally, and sometimes without any great injury, for 'youth repairs its wasted spirits quickly, by long toil incurring short fatigue? it is for otherwise with you who have to have passed through so much to whom the loss of buoyancy and animal vigor there is remaining, must sensibly impairs enjoyment, if it do not shorten life. The shortness of time, is a weighty consideration bearing on this point - if the physical system be in good tone, the mind usually finds employment and enjoyment and improvement too, or can do so, however the hands are employed but if the body is overtaken, the mind sympathizes with it and becomes unfitted for any thing but depressing unthankful, perhaps repining thoughts and uncomfortable feelings. What an amount of happiness true and deep, is case aside by mouth because the body has usurped all the energies, the mind is too weary, weak, or ignorant to appreciate or improve its own prerogative. I have enjoyed much this winter in my own mind, and in communion with other minds, by reading, I feel