"_Monday afternoon, May 19._--I have received your charming letter, dated on Thursday last. It is just the thing, a simple narrative of facts; and you will find plenty of materials of this sort, as I stated to you before. I have been in the saddle to-day nearly five hours with your Uncle W. and Father Taylor, and am very tired, but shall get refreshed by a night's rest.
"The day is beautiful, finer than any we have had since you left home. We went to Mount Auburn, and it appears very lovely; how much better than the dreary resting-places for the dead so common in New England, overgrown with thistles, and the graves hardly designated by a rude stone! Our Puritan forefathers mistook very much, I think, in making the place of deposit for our mortal remains so forbidding in appearance to the living. A better taste is growing among us. It may become a matter of ostentation (we are so apt to go to extremes), to build sepulchres and monuments to hold our bodies, that will speak to our shame when we are no longer subjects of trial; when, in short, we shall have gone to our account. If these monuments could speak to their living owners, and induce them to labor to merit, while they may, a good word from the future lookers on, then they would be valuable indeed. As it is, I have no fault to find; it is decidedly better than the old fashion of making these tenements look as dreary as anything in this world can look."
"Tell ---- that I saw little ---- this morning. She is the sweetest little creature that ever lived, and I find myself smiling whenever I think of the dear child in health. Sympathy is a powerful agent in illustrating through the countenance the feelings within. I believe my face is as arrant a tell-tale as ever was worn; and whenever I think of those I love, under happy circumstances, I am happy, too. So you may judge how much I enjoy in the belief that you are enjoying so much, and doing so well, in this journey."
On February 8, 1835, he writes to a young friend:
"Take care that fancy does not beguile you of your understanding in making your choice: a mere picture is not all that is needful in the up and down hills of life. The arrangements of the household and the sick room have more in them to fasten upon the heart than all the beauties and honors of the mere gala days, however successfully shown off. Be careful, when you pick, to get a heart, a soul, and a body; not a show of a body that has mere vitality. All this comes in _by the ears_; but it is in,--I will not blot it out."