two weeks. I have taken
a liking to the abominable place, and every time I get ready to leave, I
put it off a day or so, from some unaccountable cause. It is as hard
on my conscience to leave New York, as it was easy to leave Hannibal. I
think I shall get off Tuesday, though.

Edwin Forrest has been playing, for the last sixteen days, at the
Broadway Theatre, but I never went to see him till last night. The play
was the "Gladiator." I did not like parts of it much, but other portions
were really splendid. In the latter part of the last act, where the
"Gladiator" (Forrest) dies at his brother's feet, (in all the fierce
pleasure of gratified revenge,) the man's whole soul seems absorbed
in the part he is playing; and it is really startling to see him. I am
sorry I did not see him play "Damon and Pythias" the former character
being his greatest. He appears in Philadelphia on Monday night.

I have not received a letter from home lately, but got a "'Journal'" the
other day, in which I see the office has been sold. I suppose Ma, Orion
and Henry are in St. Louis now. If Orion has no other project in his
head, he ought to take the contract for getting out some weekly
paper, if he cannot get a foremanship. Now, for such a paper as the
"Presbyterian" (containing about 60,000,--[Sixty thousand ems, type
measurement.]) he could get $20 or $25 per week, and he and Henry could
easily do the work; nothing to do but set the type and make up the
forms....

If my letters do not come often, you need not bother yourself about me;
for if you have a brother nearly eighteen years of age, who is not able
to take care of himself a few miles from home, such a brother is not
worth one's thoughts: and if I don't manage to take care of No. 1, be
assured you will never know it. I am not afraid, however; I shall ask
favors from no one, and endeavor to be (and shall be) as "independent as
a wood-sawyer's clerk."

I never saw such a place for military companies as New York. Go on the
street when you will, you are sure to meet a company in full uniform,
with all the usual appendages of drums, fifes, &c. I saw a large company
of soldiers of 1812 the other day, with a '76 veteran scattered here and
there in the ranks. And as I passed through one of the parks lately,
I came upon a company of boys on parade. Their uniforms were neat, and
their muskets about half the common size. Some of them were not more
than seven or eight years of age; but had evide