I am very glad to hear you are so well off in Hamburg. I should like to be with you. I advise you to stay as long as you can afford to. The fact is evident now that when we were travelling we were living a great deal more, getting a great deal more out of the world, loving oftener, hating oftener, reaching a great many more mile stones. Everybody at home seems to be superficial, frivolous, absorbed in a tide of foam, gas and bubbles.

Dear me, I am very old. I have not, nor am I ever now expecting to have, trying to have, any earnest sympathies with the fellows. And as for ’women in distinction from men, money would almost buy the use of my right and expectation of ever really conversing with one again. I am a thoroughly used up young man. If all the rest of the world should die it would not disappoint me much. It’s just Fate—and there’s no use crying, and that’s the only reason I have not and do not continually die of a broken heart. My balloon is smashed. Daylight has walked into my theatre. A half crazy Philosopher, I am woke up, my feet shackled and my hands tied, a mask on my face, carried downstairs with the rest of the crowd. The sun shines, ice is cold, fire is hot, punch is both sweet and sour, Fred Olmsted is alone, is stupid, is crazy and is unalterably a weak sinner and unhappy and happy. This is my truest and most solid and sustainable standpoint.

I am quite as much what everybody, even you and I, calls an infidel as I am a Christian in belief and perhaps in practice; but not I hope in Faith. I never expect to be a real good man and I always expect to be in this world a downright sinner. I believe circumstances make it morally impossible for me to come up to even the ordinary standard of Christian life. I expect it less than ever. If there’s a Hell, besides, I’m bound to suffer it. There’s no use whining about it now—very much the contrary. The fear of it will do me no good. I have to take my chance of it, but meantime I’ll enjoy the pleasure of doing all the good my chains will let me reach to.

The love of money is the root of considerable evil. How it does narrow and degrade and blind most everybody here. They actually let nothing come in competition with business. They will not pay their respect to God until they have free leave from Mammon. The common people are ill natured, desperately selfish and incapable of friendship of more than words. Not [359]so beastly and stupid as the English but more crafty and hypocritical—yet better according to their light than the rich.

Stay where you are as long as you can. Get the good and happy characteristics of other nations. Shake off and resist their badness and unhappiness and come and preach with Faith, if you can, when you cannot stay away any longer. For my part, I am not the least bit glad to get back. (I won’t say home for home is poetry.) Stay away. See good people, happy people, or people who are not unhappy only because they can not get more money, or money’s worth.

I wish that I had seen more of the better, more polished classes. I wish that I had spent more money. I wish that I had borrowed money if necessary. I advise you to. Borrow money and dress well. Travel by railway and pay for the inside of the cathedral and for a catalogue to the Picture Gallery. Conform now, when you come to America fight. Most of all do I wish I had seen more of the Saints, the earnest men. Their memory is my bottle of water keeping my Faith alive in this desert. See all you can of them, going to London or Bingen or Paris on purpose for this. Even Neill and the ladies I love. I believe I would half marry one of them if she were here. Indeed I do.

Give my love to them if you see them. Don’t tell them how mad I am that I did not swim ashore that time I was last in Belfast Loch to see them. I’d rather be there than here a big dam sight. Luxury is killing everybody I know.

We had Fred Kingsbury here last Sunday. We did not [have] a very good time, but rather better than I expected. I knew long ago I’d lost him along with the rest. On the whole Fred seemed better off than you’d suppose. He must be doing others and the world a great deal of good. I doubt if he is himself much. Still he is moving yet and, if slowly, perhaps with more weight and certainty.

I saw his wife under unfavorable circumstances. I closed right in as if she had been a part of old Fred and I had a right to be careless and sociable or silent. She took it well. At first she seemed very unpromising, but fetching another stand point, I understood her differently and have faith enough in Fred at least to say I liked her after half an hour very—well,—much. Better than most anybody else I have seen since I came back.

She is nothing but an old fashioned sub[terranean] half man though. Good enough for a wife or a servant—no equal friend. Is it impossible, must equality make misery, must unity depend on submission? Thank god—if it must he so yet, there is a better time coming. But we must live while we do live. It is home though wherever we take Christ’s Spirit. Don’t come this side of the water for it. Find it where you are, and ev[en among stra]ngers.

The Fugitive Slave Act is raising a great dust. You will see from [360]Greeley there is a fearful reaction. The free principles of the North can not stand against the danger of losing Southern trade. The virtue spouted last year was but gas and sentimentality. I think both sides now very wrong. Fred Kingsbury does not read Beecher’s articles in The Independent.. Meantime from the South the mutter of discontent is growing into a roar for disunion. A majority for resistance to—I don’t know what the devil the oppression is—is claimed in some states—resistance and nullification. Money is at the bottom of the sin on both sides.

Our 1st County Agricultural Fair went off unexpectedly well. I expect to have towards $20 worth of premiums, notwithstanding my absence. But the farm does look shockingly shabby after Scotland. See a German farm if you can. I mean as much a German farmer. The character and condition of the better farmers as well as the mere laborers I know very little of—in Germany.

I want you to get or order in London in addition to what I asked previously; Morton on Soils (up to $2); Hutchinson on Spring Draining (Not over $2); Hewitt Davis on Thin Sowing, (a pamphlet); Prof. Johnstone’s Tables of Experiments in Agriculture (A pamphlet, very important).

You had better write to Stevens and ask him to hand a list of books you and I want to the American book agents, or his agents in London, if you are not going to be there any time. Have them sent to you at Liverpool if you like. I’ll pay freight and all charges willingly.

I went out yesterday to see Mrs. West &c., but John wanted to come down and so I returned without. Mrs. Dr. Parker has had a baby. There is no news amongst us. The fact is nobody now, we either when we are with them, knows we have been away, or that you are away. It’s just the same old story. Bertha has begun to wear long dresses. The last frost finished the leaves. Ice every night now. John has engaged a small room back, with a bed and fire in Wooster St.—224, opposite Bond. Nearly 3½ without board. John Neill has been very sick, gone south. Do not know when he will go home. They are going to build a Dutch uninformed church house here at Bloomingview on Faith & Credit. A Catholic church trying to raise the wind at Rossville.

You have only been gone 8 months, which [. . .] here is no time. Stay long enough to make it a real life Adieu.