having nothing we have all."

TO MRS. HECKER.--"Brook Farm, May 16, 1843.--DEAR MOTHER: You will
not take it unkind, my not writing to you before? I am sure you will
not, for you know what I am. Daily I feel more and more indebted to
you for my life, especially when I feel happy and good. How can I
repay you? As you, no doubt, would wish me to-by becoming better and
living as you have desired and prayed that I should, which I trust,
by Divine assistance, I may.

"Mother, I cannot express the depth of gratitude I feel toward you
for the tender care and loving discipline with which you brought me
up to manhood. Without it, oh! what might I not have been? The good
that I have, under God, I am conscious that I am greatly indebted to
thee for; at times I feel that it is thou acting in me, and that
there is nothing that can ever separate us. A bond which is as
eternal as our immortality, our life, binds us together and cannot be
broken.

"Mother, that I should be away from home at present no doubt makes
you sorrowful often, and you wish me back. Let me tell you how it is
with me. The life which surrounds me in New York oppresses me,
contracts my feelings, and abridges my liberty. Business, as it is
now pursued, is a burden upon my spiritual life, and all its
influence hurtful to the growth of a better life. This I have felt
for a long time, and feel it now more intensely than before. And the
society I had there was not such as benefited me. My life was not
increased by theirs, and I was gradually ceasing to be. I was lonely,
friendless, and without object in this world, while at the same time
I was conscious of a greater degree of activity of mind in another