3

When I review the period which has elapsed since this month last year,
my heart swells with gratitude toward that God who orders the
events of life. When I consider the vicissitiudes incident to human
life, the mutability of its enjoyments, the alternations of its joys
& sorrows the anxieties & fear which generaly embitter its hap-
piest moments, its fairest promises of hope often blasted
to disappointment, & even the completion of our wishes,
inadequate to our expectations, I look upon my own life,
with a grateful surprise, & feel as if I was exempted from
the common destiny of man. This last year, has been one
of the happiest of a happy life! [The more?] Its vicissitudes
have been of the pleasing kind, the blessings which marked
its commencement have been augmented, the anxieties
& fears which I often felt, have been displaced by the happiest
certainty; my little Julia who was then enfeebled by disease
now enjoys the most perfect health; & the sweet hope of being
again a mother, which then dawned upon my heart, has been
most delightfully realized & another darling daughter is given
to my bosom. From habit, more than from experience
we are accustomed to speak of human life, as a scene
of trial, a dream, a journey filled with dangers & suffering,
a voyage, which is exposed to storms, to rocks, to shipwrecks,
insensibly these analogies, influence the mind, & it acquiesces
without examination. A rational being should reflect;
should reason; opinions & convictions of such importance
should be the result of deliberate judgement, & not
of a lively imagination. In examining my own mind,