Letters of Life (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866 edition. Excerpt: ... LETTER XIII. LITERATUBE. My literary course has been a happy one. It commenced in impulse, and was continued from habit. Two principles it has ever kept in view--not to interfere with the discharge of womanly duty, and to aim at being an instrument of good. My journals, which I have already mentioned were begun at an early age, were usually made the repositories of my poems, in the order in which they were composed. Those systematic records became a sort of necessity of my existence. They seemed an adjunct in religious progress, and to justify the adjuration with which one of them is consecrated: "Give me Thine aid calmly to look upon the changes that are appointed me, and to love the little streams fed hourly from the fountain of Divine Mercy; and to hope that, when I fade, as I soon shall, like the grass, I may be renewed in the image of a glorious immortality." After my establishment in a school at Hartford, through the influence of Daniel Wadsworth, Esq., he and his lady, my lovely friend, requested a sight of my journals, which had been usually kept in sequestration. He made selections from their contents which he persuaded me were adapted to the public eye; and I adventured, under his guardianship, on what was in those times, and in our part of the country, a novel enterprise for a female. 1815. 1. "Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse," was the modest title of my first volume, which comprised two hundred and sixty-seven pages. My kind patron, the first who ever gave encouragement to my literary tastes, and whose name I cannot utter without a thrill of gratitude, took upon himself the whole responsibility of contracting with publishers, gathering subscriptions, and even correcting the proof-sheets; and was delighted to present me, at...