Alcott's Arbor

can teach us all how to pronounce. If you should discover any rare hoard of wooden or pewter horses, I have no doubt he will know how to appreciate it. He occasionally surveys mankind from my shoulders as wisely as ever Johnson did. I respect him not a little, though it is I that lift him up so unceremoniously. . .

...

Alcott has heard that I laughed, and so set the people laughing, at his arbor, though I never laughed louder than when I was on the ridge-pole. But now I have not laughed for a long time, it is so serious. He is very grave to look at. But, not knowing all this, I strove innocently enough, the other day, to engage his attention to my mathematics. "Did you ever study geometry, the relation of straight lines to curves, the transition from the finite to the infinite? Fine things about it in Newton and Leibnitz." But he would hear none of it, — men of taste preferred the natural curve. Ah, he is a crooked stick himself. . . . As for the building, I feel a little oppressed when I come near it. It has no great disposition to be beautiful; it is certainly a wonderful structure, on the whole, and the fame of the architect will endure as long as it shall stand. . . .

It is true enough, Cambridge College is really beginning to wake up and redeem its character and overtake the age. I see by the catalogue that they are about establishing a scientific school in connection with the university, at which any one above eighteen, on paying one hundred dollars annually (Mr. Lawrence's fifty thousand dollars will probably diminish this sum), may be instructed in the highest branches of science, "theoretical and in astronomy, practical, with the use of the instruments" (so the great Yankee astronomer may be born without delay), in mechanics and engineering to the last degree. Agassiz will ere long commence his lectures in the zoological department. A chemistry class has already been formed under the

direction of Professor Horsford. A new and adequate building for the purpose is already being erected. They have been foolish enough to put at the end of all this earnest the old joke of a diploma. Let every sheep keep but his own skin, I say.

Miss

I have had a tragic correspondence, for the most part all on one side, with She did really wish to I hesitate to write marry me. That is the way they spell it. Of course I did not write a deliberate answer. How could I deliberate upon it? I sent back as distinct a no as I have learned to pronounce after considerable practice, and I trust that this no has succeeded. Indeed, I wished that it might burst, like hollow shot, after it had struck and buried itself and made itself felt there. There was no other way. I really had anticipated no such foe as this in my career.

I suppose you will like to hear of my book, though I have nothing worth writing about it. Indeed, for the last month or two I have forgotten it, but shall certainly remember it again. Wiley & Putnam, Munroe, the Harpers, and Crosby & Nichols have all declined printing it with the least risk to themselves; but Wiley & Putnam will print it in their series, and any of them anywhere, at my risk. If I liked the book well enough, I should not delay; but for the present I am indifferent. I believe this is, after all, the course you advised, to let it lie.

I do not know what to say of myself. I sit before my green desk, in the chamber at the head of the stairs, and attend to my thinking, sometimes more, sometimes less distinctly. I am not unwilling to think great thoughts if there are any in the wind, but what they are I am not sure. They suffice to keep me awake while the day lasts, at any rate. Perhaps they will redeem some portion of the night ere long.

Concord Politics

I can imagine you astonishing, bewildering, confounding, and sometimes delighting John Bull with your Yankee notions, and that he begins to take a pride in the relationship at last; introduced to all the stars of England in succession, after the lecture, until you pine to thrust your head once more into a genuine and unquestionable nebular, if there be any left. . . .

Hugh [the gardener] still has his eye on the Walden agellum, and orchards are waving there in the windy future for him. That's the where-I'll-go-next, thinks he; but no important steps are yet taken. . . . Unfortunately, the day after cattle-show- -the day after small beer-he was among the missing, but not long this time. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots, nor indeed Hugh his Hugh.

They have been choosing between John Keyes and Sam Staples, if the world wants to know it, as representative of this town, and Staples is chosen. The candidates for governor - think of my writing this to you! - were Governor Briggs and General Cushing, and Briggs is elected, though the Democrats have gained. Ain't I a brave boy to know so much of politics for the nonce? But I shouldn't They have had

have known it if Coombs hadn't told me.

a peace meeting here, I shouldn't think of telling you if I didn't know anything would do for the English market, —and some men, Deacon Brown at the head, have signed a long pledge, swearing that they will "treat all mankind as brothers henceforth." I think I shall wait and see how they treat me first. I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace. So good-by, and a truce to all joking, my dear friend, from

H. D. T.

James Russell Lowell considers Cambridge doings quite as interesting as those of Italy

MY

(To William Wetmore Story)

ELMWOOD, March 10th, 1848

Y DEAR WILLIAM,- I begin with a cheerful confidence as near the top of the page as I can, trusting that Providence will somehow lead me through my three pages to a triumphant "yours truly" at the end. Emelyn writes in good spirits, but I cannot help suspecting a flaw somewhere. There must be not a little of the desolate island where S. M. F. is considered agreeable. It is hardly possible that pure happiness should exist so far from Cambridge. One needs not to go as far as Rome to find an attic, nor should I prefer an Italian clime to an American one. As for ruins, you have there, to be sure, plenty of them, the work of . . . Goths and other people with whom you have nothing whatever to do. But here we have an excellent ruin on Mount Benedict which we made ourselves. And, if you mention political changes, Italy has been getting herself born again ever since I can remember, and will have to be delivered by a Cæsarian operation after all. Besides, have not we ours? It is not a week since Sidney Willard was elected to our Cantabrigian Mayor's nest in place of James D. Green. Mr. B. has been dismissed from the office as field-driver. We have two watchmen, who, I have no doubt, could put to flight the Pope's whole civic guard. Deacon Brown has retired from business. Will not all these things be as important to the interests of mankind a hundred years hence as that Noodle VI. sits on the throne of the two Sicilies or Loafer XXI. in the grand-ducal chair of Florence? If you have your Pio Nonos, we can also

Thermometrical Satisfactions

boast our Tommy Nonose also, whom I meet every time I go to the Athenæum.

Emelyn talks of roses in blossom. For my part I think them no better out of season than green peas. I could never enter fully into these thermometrical and meteorological satisfactions. Have you had three weeks' sleighing? Have you had the thermometer at 14 below zero? Have you stored twenty thousand tons of ice? I presume you have not even so much as an ice-sickle to reap such a crop with. But I will not triumph, seeing that these are things in which I had no hand, and it is not your fault that you have no winter. We are not without our roses either, and the growth of the open air too. You should see them in Maria's cheeks- roses without a thorn, as St. Basil supposes them to have been in Eden. . . . I confess I never had any great opinion of the ancient Romans. They stole everything. They stole the land they built the Eternal City on, to begin with. Then they stole their wives, then their religion, then their art. They never invented more than one god of any consequence, as far as I know, and he was a two-faced one, an emblem of the treacherous disposition of the people. Niebuhr has proved that they made up the only parts of their history that are creditable to them.

To-day, J. Q. Adams's body is received in Boston with great pomp. I am sorry that I cannot send you a programme of the procession, that you might show the Romans we can do a thing or two. The "Eastern magnificence" of the theatres is nothing to it. The corpse will be followed by one consistent politician (if he can be found) as chief mourner. The procession will consist wholly of what the newspapers call "unmingled" patriots, and will of course be very large. I have sent in a bale of moral pocket handkerchiefs for the mourners and for wads