Something I need to share

(An excerpt from a letter to the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorn, written by Melville)

"We can't help ourselves"
For tho' we know what we ought to be; & what it would be very sweet & beautiful to be; yet we can't be it. That is most sad, too. Life is a long Dardenelles, My Dear Madam, the shores whereof are bright with flowers, which we want to pluck, but the bank is too high; & so we float on & on, hoping to come to a landing-place at last -- but swoop! we launch into the great sea! Yet the geographers say, even then we must not despair, because across the great sea, however desolate & vacant it may look, lie all Persia & the delicious lands roundabout Damascus.
So wishing you a pleasant voyage at last to that sweet & far countree --
Beleive Me Earnestly Thine--
Herman Melville