have given myself no air of being better than I am.'

And again:--

'In the chamber of death, I prayed in very early years, "Give
me truth; cheat me by no illusion." O, the granting of this
prayer is sometimes terrible to me! I walk over the burning
ploughshares, and they sear my feet. Yet nothing but truth
will do; no love will serve that is not eternal, and as large
as the universe; no philanthropy in executing whose behests
I myself become unhealthy; no creative genius which bursts
asunder my life, to leave it a poor black chrysalid behind.
And yet this last is too true of me.'

She describes a visit made in May, 1844, at the house of some
valued friends in West Roxbury, and adds: 'We had a long and deep
conversation, happy in its candor. Truth, truth, thou art the great
preservative! Let free air into the mind, and the pestilence cannot
lurk in any corner.'

And she uses the following language in an earnest letter to another
friend:--

'My own entire sincerity, in every passage of life, gives me a
right to expect that I shall be met by no unmeaning phrases or
attentions.'

* * * * *

'Reading to-day a few lines of ----, I thought with