Transcription:
5 5 my earliest childhood Nature has called to me with imperious power, and she has been a most timid and precious mother
and teacher to me and has told me many of her secrets. but in the majesty and sublimity of her mightiest power I have not
seen her But I fully expect to have that privilege when freed from the limitations of this material body. I shall then take
the wings of the morning and visit not only the parts and scenes of this so fair earth that I have long desired to see, but
many, it may be all of the other Mansions of the Father's house. Some years ago I saw - in The Atlantic Monthly I think -
your account of a great electric storm, and of your rushing out of your mountain cabin into the midst of the illegible and
flying rocks, in order to be present at the birth of a talus. Many times since I have thought of that scene. Would that I
had been there. Neither warring elements nor flying rocks could have hindered me from being a sharer in its fierce and far
delight, a portion of the tempest, and of the night What a perennial joy it must be to have lived amid the sights and sounds.
and silences that have been your 6 6 environment for so many years. And yet the all-wise Father has ordained that we
shall have reminders that the things that are seen are only temporal The string that bids us sit nor stand, but go is ever
with us, and the joy that illegible us thro' pain is the sweetest of all, and the only one that abides. Whenever the foot
of man has trod his pathway has been marred by graves, but? from those he looks up into the face of God, and sees heaven opened.
I presume there are conventional rules that would say that I ought to apologize for the liberty I have taken in writing you,
but I have paid but little heed to such thro' my life, and it is now too late to begin. It may be that when we shall meet
on the other side of the curtain that now shuts us from the unseen world that lies about us all' that we shall not need an
introduction Even now I venture to subscribe myself as Your sincere friend S. M. Brown