as usual. But I am going to send this, though it be worth nothing
but to get a letter from you.

If letters, like dreams, came from the multitude of business, I should
write of nothing but that tragedy extempore,-for I am sure it was got up
in a minute,-the argument whereof was your running away. It positively
is the staple of conversation. And I think it is rather hard upon me,
too. I am here; but that seems to go for nothing. All their talk is of
your going away,--running away, I say,--desertion,--and help yourself if
you can. . . .

My love to Henry Ware, and the love of me and mine to you and yours.

Yours ever,

O. DEWEY.

[See p. 86.]

[160] To the Same.

NEW YORK, Dec. 1, 1836.

MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,--For a prince you are in letter-writing, and you
can call me Lord Orville, for I have a birthright claim to that title.'
Excuse this capricole of my pen; it has been drawing hard enough at a
sermon all the morning, and can't help cutting a caper when it is let
out. You won't get the due return for your good long letter this time,
nor ever, I think. I am taking comfort in the good long letters that are
going with mine, and of whose sending by this conveyance I am the cause.

This conveyance is Miss Searle; and if you and Mrs. Ware don't cultivate
her, or let her cultivate you, your folly will be inconceivable.

Mrs. Jameson I have missed two or three chances of seeing,--very
bright sometimes, and very foolish others; but who shall resist such
intoxicating draughts as have for some years been offered to her! She
set off for Canada yesterday, going for her husband, since he could n't
or would n't come for her.

Ingham has just finished one of the most exquisite portraits of Miss
Sedgwick that eye ever saw. Did you see anything of it before you went?

Furness ['s book] is selling much, and I hear nothing but admiration,
save the usual quaver in the song about the part on miracles. Apropos,
. . . I think that the explication of the miracles must be a moot and not
a test point, and I would not break with the [161] "Christian Examiner"
upon it; and yet I think the heterodox opinions of Ripley should have
come into it in the shape of a letter, and not of a review. It is rather
absurd to say "We" with such confidence, and that for opinions in
conflict with the whole course of the "Examiner" and the known opinions
of almost all its supporters. . . .

[FN He was named after Lord Orville, the hero of Miss Burney's