I am glad to get your note of yesterday from Hartford, & glad that you can ease up & recruit when there is occasion. That promises a comfortable & useful old age. You can have no idea what a drag life had been to me for three years or more. I did not appreciate it myself until I began last summer to get better. The turning point appears to have been our abandonment of New York. I am still delapidated—have a great noise in my head and a little exertion sets my heart bouncing but I sleep well and seem to myself to carry on my legs not quarter of the weight I did a year ago. I have done much hard & steady work. The pamphlet of which you speak was mostly written after midnight & did not prevent me from getting regularly five or six hours refreshing sleep. I enjoy this suburban country beyond expression and in fact, the older I grow find my capacity for enjoyment increasing. We have had great trials & agitations in the last year but their result on the whole has been withal tranquilizing. I am to turn sixty with two grandsons.

I am receiving many letters from strangers asking copies of the Spoils of the Park but yours is the second letter commenting upon it and I think it singular [593] that the Press takes so little notice of it. I have seen but three references to it in New York & these all turning it to some partisan account—not looking to the rescue of the park, which, of course, is a disappointment to me. But no doubt the fact is it hits hard on all sides & disturbs all manner of plans. Few men of influence in New York are not interested directly or by regard for friends in some scheme which would cross good managment of the park for its proper ends. I fear that its ruin is inevitable & it is very depressing to me. But my mind is pretty well made up to it, and this probably is my last blow. Of course, you understand that but for wounding the feelings of well-intentioned men, I could have given more effective and disgusting illustrations, and also that entente between Vaux, Parsons, Green & Tilden, regard for the memory of Col. Stebbins, & consideration of the responsibility of several men of good standing for some of the more atrocious bargains obliged me to steer as delicately as possible. I consider it as bread thrown on the waters.

The one man in New York who has given me encouragmnt & solace of late is your friend Potter. He has been bold, generous, sympathetic & liberal—all with reference to Niagara but the spirit of it has refreshed me in everything.

You will see Field I suppose—poor fellow. His life now must be very lonely. Even his old companion elms swept away. Give my love to him. And Rosa, whom I suppose you will find mistress of Hanwell. I wish that Field could make us a visit. I am sure he would enjoy Boston suburbs.