dead. To think that so many bitter men and women are let live, and this faithful, gentle, blithe little spirit blotted out! All else is well with me and mine. Ever yours, To the Same T. B. ALDRICH. DANS UN GRENIER, Nov. 18, 1891. MY DEAR WOODBERRY, - Here are some poems for you to read and send back to me without letting any one lay eye or ear on them. If you were not sincere in lamenting your separation from my verse you have brought the punishment down on you with your own hands. If you don't find "Insomnia" grotesque, and the "Two Moods" thoughtful, and the "Sonnet" striking - then you shall have your money returned to you at the door. . . . These are flush times with me. I write some verse every day, and have already half enough matter to make a volume of the size of my last. Maybe these are my swansongs! . . . Dear old Booth, I'm so sorry about him! Affectionately, T. B. A. To the Same MILTON, May 14, 1892. DEAR WOODBERRY, -This little realm-bounded on the North by "Tamerlane," and on the South, East, and West by preparations for Europe must seem to you a very contracted realm indeed, compared to the great wallowing sphere in which you live, move, and have your — salary. Nevertheless, I drop you a line from this dim spot of earth called Boston. A bloated bondholder with $1850 snatched that copy of "Tamerlane" away from me and I saw it go with tears in my eyes. I went home and wrote a misanthropic poem called "Unguarded Gates" (July "Atlantic" !), in which I mildly protest against America becoming the cesspool of Europe. I'm much too late, however. I looked in on an anarchist meeting the other night, as I told you, and heard such things spoken by our "feller citizens" as made my cheek burn. These brutes are the spawn and natural result of the French Revolution; they don't want any government at all, they "want the earth" (like a man in a balloon) and chaos. My Americanism goes clean beyond yours. I believe in America for the Americans; I believe in the widest freedom and the narrowest license, and I hold that jail-birds, professional murderers, amateur lepers (" moon-eyed" or otherwise), and human gorillas generally should be closely questioned at our Gates. Or the "sifting" that was done of old will have to be done over again. A hundred and fifty years from now, Americans - if any Americans are left will find themselves being grilled for believing in God after their own fashion. As nearly as I can estimate it off-hand, there will be only five or six extant - the poor devils! I pity them prospectively. They were a promising race, they had such good chances, but their politicians would coddle the worst elements for votes, and the newspapers would appeal to the slums for readers. The reins of government in all their great cities and towns slipped from the hands of the natives. A certain Arabian writer, called Rudyard Kipling, described exactly the government of every city and town in the (then) United States when he described that of New York as being "a despotism of the alien, by the alien, for the alien, tempered with occasional insurrections of decent folk." But to turn to important matters. I am having a bit of headstone made for Trip's grave at Ponkapog. The dear little fellow! he had better manners and more intelligence than half the persons you meet "on the platform of a WestEnd car." He was n't constantly getting drunk and falling out of the windows of tenement houses, like Mrs. O'Flararty; he was n't forever stabbing somebody in North Street. Why should he be dead, and these other creatures exhausting the ozone? If he had written realistic novels and "poems" I could understand "the deep damnation of his taking off." In view of my own mature years I will not say that "they die early whom the gods love." . . . No. 59 is to close its door on May 17, and we are to spend our time here and there, principally at Ponkapog, until the 13th of June, when we shall go to New York to sail on the 15th.... Mrs. T. B. is having a good time in turning our house upside down, and making it no place for a Christian to write hundred-dollar lyrics in. She insisted |