I received yours of 16th January just now. I have seen my first letter in “Times.” There is but one misprint in it: “guise” (italicized) for raise. Thank you for your criticisms, but it wouldn’t have taken so long to have corrected the errors before printing as after. Why didn’t you see that the simple heading [210] South was made as I told you, instead of the long one that I may not come up to—as you say in your last letter, too, would be better? I have not [seen] letters sent to H. Neill. He was to direct [them) to [the] office of a friend where I am now writ[ing]. I don’t know why they don’t come, except that they don’t give them up on account of the direction “to be called for.”

I have called on Bain 8 or 10 times & haven’t found him in. He left a card for me also at “St. Charles.” I met him once in City Hall & was introduced to him. He will do nothing. The prospect you may judge from his remark, half enquiringly, “I believe your brother was a member of my class.”

“Yes.”

“But only for a short time-he entered it from another.”

He seemed to have forgotten that he ever had known John—is it possible? He is over full of business & I doubt if I shall have a talk with him. But I think of employing him in his lawyer capacity to make a digest of Code Noir of Louisiana for me—that is if it don’t cost too much.

You can’t imagine how hard it is to get hold of a conversable man—and when you find, he will talk about anything else but slavery &c. Music I am surfeited with, that is, talk on music.

Raymond’s introduction is very handsome and well expressed, but I can’t live up to it. I am very much discouraged. Since Virginia, I have written nothing—but 4 letters merely describing roads and taverns and conveyances. I am in doubt whether to publish them at all. But I have a good deal of material by which I can dress up a general view, description, of the S. E. Slave States. I know all about Red River sort of folks, there’s nothing to be said that can’t be put into one letter. They are all the same—just the half—brutes, half-gentlemen that John describes the medical students of Paris. And as to domestic life or negro plantation life, I can not see it. The negroes are at work—anywhere the same all day—and you can’t go into their cabins at night any more than you could into English cabins—not so much, because their master might shoot you. He himself won’t go into them, from delicacy, unless with especial purpose—and such purpose as he wouldn’t let another man meddle in. They are jealous of observation of things that would tell against slavery, not only as to northern men but as to southern neighbors.

A letter I wrote father yesterday will show you how I feel—also inform you of my plans. Mr. Duncan, an arrogant, vain, pompous humbug, told me Dick Taylor was nearly dead and there seemed to be no chance of my getting onto a plantation, as Baker’s was 2 days distant down toward the gulf, and nobody else seemed willing to help me to see one. But calling on Taylor’s factor yesterday to make sure, I learned that he was sufficiently well to walk about & would probably be glad to have me come, so I go tonight. I believe old Duncan purposely deceived me to prevent me seeing [a] slave plantation, for he knew my purpose & told me I was too young and enthusiastic to examine [the] subject, moreover it was nobody’s business but their own & the North did [not) need the information &c.-cursed old fogey.

[211]

I think you are too damned busy Charley—this is another sprawling note, spun out on 1½ pages of small paper & 2/3ds merely a repetition for the 50th time of what you had said to me several hundred times before I left—or what I have said to you. And about yourself personally, this paragraph is all: “Working like smoke in the Children’s”—something illegible and I don’t know, having never been informed, what.

Don’t advise me any more to go up Red River or to look up Bane or to write to J. W. Skinner—(I have done so.) If you can’t think of anything else to fill up with—put your signature.

I received John’s letter of January 17th, enclosed by father, this morning. It is melancholy. I have not received Eliza Neill’s or H. Barnes’, though I still continue writing back for them. They are in the tomb of Washington before now. H. Neill I enjoyed and there is an Englishman here that I didn’t find till yesterday-to whom I [am] introduced by him-that promises to be [a] very pleasant if not useful acquaintance.

Look sharp about the trees. $500 risk in their exposure.

Write immediately, last chance, to New Orleans. Next to Tuscaloosa, Alabama.