haste enough to make up for the lack of it.

If now, after the foregoing, you feel any inclination to send me the
essay on "Analogy" (capital subject), pray do so. I will read it, and if
I have anything to say about it, will speak as frankly as above.

I shall be in this place--Groveland, Mass.--about three weeks; after
that in Worcester a short while.

Very truly yours,

DAVID A. WASSON.

Groveland, Mass., June 18, 1862.

Mr. Burroughs,--

My Dear Sir,--

I am sorry to have detained your MS. so long, but part of the time I
have been away, and during the other portion of it, the fatigue that I
must undergo was all that my strength would bear.

I read your essay carefully in a few days after receiving it and laid
it aside for a second perusal. Now I despair of finding time for such
a second reading as I designed, and so must write you at once my
impressions after a single reading.

The inference concerning your mind that I draw from your essay enhances
the interest I previously felt in you. All that you tell me of yourself
has the same effect. You certainly have high, very high, mental power;
and the patience and persistency that you must have shown hitherto
assures me that you will in future be equal to the demands of your
intellect. As to publishing what you have now written, you must judge.
The main question, is whether you will be discouraged by failure of your
book. If not, publish, if you like; and then, if the public ignores your
thought, gather up your strength again and write so that they cannot
ignore you. For, in truth, the public does not like to think; it likes
to be amused; and conceives a sort of hatred against the writer who
would force it to the use of its intellect. This is invariably the case;
it will be so with you. If the public finds anything in your work that
can be condemned, it will be but too happy to pass sentence; if it can
make out to think that you are a pretender, it will gladly do so; if it
can turn its back upon you and ignore you, its back, and nothing else,
you will surely see. And this on account of your merits. You really have
thoughts. You make combinations of your own. You have freighted your
words out of your own mental experience. You do not flatter any of the
sects by using their cant. Now, then, be sure that you have got to do
finished work, finished in every minutest particular, for years, before
your claims will be allowed.

If you _were_ a pretender, your suc