We have not heard from or of you since I last wrote. No material change here. In fact I should describe my own condition precisely as I did week before last. With practice I gain a little more power of locomotion and am just today venturing to seat & unseat myself. In an emergency I could dress myself &—crutches at bed-head—get up, but still wear a splint and am tightly bandaged from toe to hip, & the knee not in the least better. A stiff knee is a very great inconvenience. I can not sit in a chair or turn over in bed—and the stiff leg is greatly in the way. While necessarily using crutches, I should do very much better if it were off altogether. There has been too much wind & dampness for me to go out much, but whenever it is tolerably pleasant I am toted about on the litter chair.

Mary rather worse—pretty constant sharp or sick headache. Took advice of doctor yesterday—simply ordered to be quiet & take it easy. Only wants strength. Children very well & getting on most satisfactorily with their two hours’ schooling from Miss Centayne, whom I find a most excellent teacher for such young ones at any rate. It is a regular school business, with silence, order & discipline for two hours, which order & discipline is the best of it for them. They have music & dumb-bell exercise & ten runs across the court for “recess.” They take to it kindly, & make obvious progress, so I think Charley may be expected to learn to read, after all.

The prince was hurried through the park with admirable celerity and precision. The whole stoppage for the tree-planting, speaking & walking to & fro with a strong crowd pressing and many carriages hurrying up the road, did not exceed five minutes. From the moment he entered until he left, none of the party were jostled, crowded or delayed an instant by the crowd. I arranged & superintended all the police arrangements; but neither Vaux or I were taken any notice of. Only as they were leaving, some one pointed me out to the Prince & [275] he turned & bowed to me several times until he caught my attention and returned his salute.

I am too much confined to hear much talk of politics. I see only symptomatic straws of Lincoln’s strength & believe New York city must be going better than will be generally expected.

I have much confidence in Garibaldi & am surprised the Times (Eng.) should (with Tray & the rest of course) think it need to be barking doubtfully at or about him. He & all Italy is undoubtedly indebted to the Mazzini or at least [to the] original republican revolutionary societies & committees, who in great danger & with great courage & persistence have been really opening the way which he has had the wisdom & courage to take to free the country. He has been in correspondence with them, has moved in by their invitation, has been acting under their advice. All this no one doubts, yet no one of the papers seems to see that the temporary government must be mainly administered & directed by them. They were always to have been esteemed rash—at least audacious & impracticable men. Must not the Garibaldian policy now more than ever appear to the world audacious? The whole movement has had its strength mainly in revolutionary men. Can a revolutionary quality be wholly avoided in its success? Would not Garibaldi be foolish as well as ungrateful if he took no counsel of them, if he employed or acknowledged them only for war purposes?

Kapp has just here published “a History of American Slavery”, in German, (published also, and simultaneously, in Germany) which is dedicated in a most complimentary manner to me.

A thorough inspection of the park by a Swiss Engineer who has been employed in European parks, is now being made by order of the Investigating Committee of the Senate.

The doctor comes to me now but twice a week. He says that at one of the consultations he told Parkers that if he cut off my leg I would not live through the night; if he did not, I might live a week. The chances were not one in a hundred that I recovered. Well, I hope I shall have been worth saving against odds.