From Julie to Morris, 1846.  Morris had written that he had an attack of some sort of family illness (not clear from the writing) in his previous letter and the doctor gave him ten years (he was twenty at the time), he wrote that he would spend it wildly.

Julie’s reply:

“Dear Morris, I am alone and the fire burns cheerfully before me, and there is a basket of fine grapes on the table before me. The clock has told the hour for retiring, but I am wakeful. I choose to talk to thee. The truth is my Friend, you have lived Not wisely, since we parted. And now you are but reaping the fruits. Bitter! are they not? and hardly worth the pains and toils you have bestowed to garner them up. We need to live two lives to learn how to live well. So; you tell yourself you will be satisfied with ten little portions of time, and do you think when those years have all flown, when the last sand has run you will be ready, to try what the next life will bring of pleasure or pain? Can you lay down your burdens and say to yourself that you have fulfilled all your tasks? You have lived out the precepts which your Father taught you? And heeded carefully all the warnings which your Mother breathed softly in your ear, ‘before your heart had grown familiar with the paths of sin,” and which now steal upon your memory? In the silence of midnight when you are alone save the prayers which that Mother whom you love, which float about you, like guardian spirits and hallow the place and hour? This letter will reach them.”

Julie was not one to go for sweet nothings…