I am really sorry and mad with myself, that I should have let so long a time elapse without writing to you. I have put it off from time to time—and now that I should be really excusable, because I have got so much that I must do this week before I leave home (forever), I can’t help purchasing a letter from you to cheer me in my voluntary exile to the rock bound head of Sachem. For though you never will take any direct notice of a fellow’s letters to you, the coincidence of mail following (those from you) and never coming at any other time is so invariable that it may almost be relied upon as a rule-whether it may be cause and effect or not. It won’t to be sure seem like an exchange of equivalents, unless you value commodities not by their intrinsic worth but by their rarity or the pains taken to make them.

The fact is, it is confounded [difficult] for me to write decently—to write a letter. Just think, since I came from school it has been growing harder. With you on the contrary, it is more & more an everyday business. It’s your trade to think and write—and every day adds facility to your handiwork. [284]Your mind, cutting book leaves daily, is a self-sharpening tool. Mine rooting dirt and Boating downstream grows dull, waterlogged and rusty.

Now mine friend, [. . .] every time you run your pen against me, you scrape me a little brighter.

I believe I know what your idea of Mary Day is. I do so because I had ideas. Only I didn’t feel so certain of them or so definite as you of the same kind. But now I have had some good opportunities and I have not misimproved them. But I have studied her (and this is a science not learned in books). And now you may rely upon it, Sir—she’s all that I pretended to believe she was (and didn’t, only wanted to). She’s all—and more also. I don’t believe there’s a piece of clay nearer Perfection since the day Eve cottoned to the old snake. Unless ’tis her sister. But she’s all my fancy painted her & considerable more. Hurrah! (N.B. I have not now the least mite of doubt about it.) But then a man couldn’t love an angel, I believe. (Not till he was translated.) Could an angel love a man? Real soft love? No! I reckon ’twould only be a sort of patronage. But Charly, Mary Day is not conscious of this patronage. She means to love and to like and to make folks easy and happy and good.

Well, and I guess she does too. At any rate, she thinks to be right as far as she can. And she has got a good long rope, and it’s stretched tight.

I believe she’s a first-rate specimen of the Christian of the 19th century and a beau ideal of a she-gentleman.

I have enjoyed myself a great deal at the little dancing parties this winter. Did anybody tell you about our sleigh ride to Alvord’s? The greatest piece of real right now good time I ever saw connected with what they call gay—blast the word. It has melancholy association. “Gay”—used to be “Watkinson sociable” but I have got over that or the Watkinsons have. For I really enjoyed an evening there not long since and a real change seems to ha’ come over the spirit of my dreams. For I am actually pretending to stay another day in town for the purpose of attending Mrs. Trumbull’s rout—which a year [ago] I would not have touched the invitation to with a ten foot pole.

Mary Warburton’s all right. Emily Perkins is acquiring a confirmed habit of being pretty and entertaining—which, owing to her peculiar locality, is cruelty to animals.

Charly Trask was here this morning. Gone to Andover (from New Haven—a day or two).

John says he has written you nine pages, so you won’t stand in need of any of my cooking after such a meal on your stomach. By the way, isn’t it queer they find raw raw oysters digest (I think it’s) an hour sooner than stewed. The same with eggs. You are wrong about trout. There’s nothing goes through the mill so soon as that, (you said) particularly when it’. fried.

May I write a letter to your uncle to enquire about Lucerne?. From [285]my reading I should not suppose it at all likely to succeed in this cold climate. Nor should I suppose it could be afforded to be cultivated in the English manner.

I have read the Tales of the Devils with much interest and pleasure. The Book your father published last spring—Con conversion &c.) I have enquired for in vain at Andrus’s and all the book shops—.

I sent you Bushnell’s Sermon as you wished. Fault is in the P.O., not me, if you don’t get it.