not which,--for
they are long since swept down beneath the flood of time to that
oblivion to which many cart-loads of such things are worthily
destined,--and the author of Zenobia really addresses this forgotten
preacher as his superior in strength, in power, and, it would seem,
even in the felicities of style. We hope [184] the good man had too
much sense, or humility at least, to have his head turned by such
inexplicable fatuity."

Now I will thank you to preserve this letter among your papers, that the
biographer may light upon some evidence of "the good man's" sanity.

. . . I do not think I shall go to the great May meetings in Boston. I
am afraid I am not made for them. It wants a man, at any rate, with all
his faculties about him, ready and apt and in full vigor; and mine are
not,--certainly not now-a-days, if they ever are. The condition of my
brain at present makes quiet necessary to me. Every exertion is now
something too much.

I have addressed the trustees of the church to-day, to express my
conviction to them that, by next autumn, some material change must be
made. By that time all my sermons will be preached to death, and I shall
have no power to make new ones. The church must determine whether it
will relinquish my services entirely, or have them one quarter or one
third of the time.

The thought of having soon to be clone with time and life has almost
oppressed me for the year past, so constantly has it been with me. And
indeed I have felt that there may be too much of this for the vigor, not
to say the needful buoyancy, of life. Earth is our school, our sphere;
and I more than doubt whether the anchorite's dreaming of heaven, or the
spirit of the "Saints' Rest," is the true spiritual condition. I have
long wanted to review Baxter's work, in this and other views.

With my love to your wife and children,--I mean, by your leave, your
wife especially,--I am, as ever, Yours,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[185] To the Same.

NEW YORK, July 10, 1846.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--If from this awful heat (90 degrees in my study) where
I am busy, I were not going to an equally awful country heat where
I shall be lazy, I would put off writing a few days. . . . My
principal--no, I won't say that--my most painful business is hunting
up sermons fit to be preached. The game grows scarce, and my greatest
vexation is that every now and then, when I think I have got a fox or a
beaver, it turns out to be a woodchuck or a muskrat.