I stay at home this
morning to write to you. I long to be at home; but the time of our departure
cannot be seen by any political astronomer. There is a probability that we
shall come to some of the exciting questions this week. We are as ready now to
meet them as we ever shall be. The great influence of Mr. Webster is brought
with full force to bear against all security for freedom in the Territories.
His name, his reputation for talent, and, above all, his power of patronage and
influence in the Government, tell with prodigious force upon all measures. His
going into the cabinet may be the salvation of Mr. Fillmore's administration;
but it is even more likely that it will be fatal to the cause of freedom. See
what comes of intellect without morality!
We had another
furious storm last night. It reminded me of the last, the one in which Sumner's
brother and Margaret Fuller were lost; and, when I hear the winds howl and
sweep so at night, my mind always goes out to watch along the seashore, and
then I cannot but see what the next papers relate of disaster and death. I
always had a special horror for a shipwreck. It seems to me the most terrible
form of death that is not ignominious. If, however, — and I often have a vivid
intellectual perception of this, regarded death as we should, it would cease to
be the dreadful spectre that it now is. How much of this, in all after-life,
must depend upon education!
SOURCE: Mary Tyler
Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 316-7
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