a pleasant thing.

And when you write, tell me whether you or Mrs. Bryant chance to know of
any person who would like to [217] come up here this summer and teach
French in my sister's school an hour or two a day for a moderate
compensation. It must be a French person,--one that can speak the
language. Her school is increasing, and she must have more help.

[FN 1: Mr. Dewey was wont to call his friend "our Magnus Apollo."]

[FN 2: Now lessened to five hours.]

With mine and all our kindest regards to Mrs. Bryant and Julia and
Fanny, I am, as ever,

Yours truly,

ORVILLE DEWEY. Tell Mrs. Bryant we depend on her at the Club.

To his Daughter Mary.

SHEFFIELD, March 4, 1850.

. . . As I suppose you are tormented with the question, "What's your
father doing in Sheffield?" you may tell them that I have taken to
lecturing the people, and that I give a second lecture to-morrow
evening, and mean to give a third. Forbye reading Hegel every morning,
and what do you think he said this morning? Why, that he had read of a
government of women, "ein Weiberstaat," in Africa, where they killed all
the men in the first place, and then all the male children, and finally
destined all that should be born to the same fate. And what do you think
your mother said when I told her of these atrocities? Even this: "That
shows what bad creatures the men must have been." And that's all I get
when trying to enlighten her upon the wickedness of her sex.

And I'm just getting through with Guizot's four volumes, too. Oh, a very
magnificent, calm, and beautiful course of lectures. You must read them.
It's the best French history, so far as it goes.

[218] To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.

SHEFFIELD, March 6, 1850.

. . . To my poor apprehension this is an awful crisis, especially if
pushed in the way the Northern doctrinaires desire. I feel it so from
what I saw of Southern feeling in Washington the winter I passed
there. I fear disunion, and no mortal line can sound the depth of that
calamity. I sometimes think that it would be well if we could wear
around this last, terrible, black headland by sounding, and trimming
sails, rather than attempt to sail by compass and quadrant. Do not
mistake my figure. I am no moral trimmer, and that you know. Conscience
must be obeyed. But conscience does not forbid that we should treat the
Southern people with great consideration. What we must do, we may do
in the spirit of love, and not of wrath or scorn. Oh,