Letter from Richard Henry Dana to Mrs. Henry Wheaton

Boston Oct 18. 1851 My dear Madam, I trust you will not consider me as obtruding the feeling & opinion of others upon you, if I send for the following extract for a letter I received for my father. "I took up the paper to-day, without having had any knowledge

of Robert Wheaton's illness, read the account of his death. It came with a shock upon me. Though I had but a slight acquaintance with him, I felt interested in him, partly, I suppose on account of his father, but quite as much from that combination of manliness and refinement that meshed his character. Mr. Parker, who sat opposite to him in the office, day after day, for so long a time, must feel deeply his sudden death. Then, there are his mother & sisters left

alone. They must have looked up to him as their only protector, in this (of late, to them) hard world. They must have had high hopes & an honest pride in him. And these are taken from them now. In afflictions of such a nature, however heavy they may be, is it not true that almost the first feeling that stirs the heart of every right minded man, is that of the goodness & love of Soul? How is it that some griefs could be borne by men before Christ came & spoke to us, & then died for us? - I know not how. How distinctly Wheaton is now standing before me - his form, his voice, his smile! I never think of death as something entire in itself - Life is always with it, if not in it, to me; & this because of our immortality -

is it not so? Amen! "Amen!" Again, in a note I had from him to-day, he says - "I do not voucher at his being so present to you. There was something morally beautiful in Mr. Wheaton" - With the greatest regard, I am, my dear Madam, Your true & obedient servant Rich H. Dana Jr Mrs. Henry Wheaton