the happiness of the emancipated
orator, and I have experienced them both; whilst it may be seen in what
I have written about silence and seclusion how cordially and perhaps
foolishly, as "wearing my heart on my sleeve," I have shown that I
greatly love to be alone, especially in what I am known to call "holy
silence;" in fact, as ill-nature may like to put it, I prefer my own
quiet company to that disturbed by the talk of other people. So much,
then, as to one cause for the scantiness in this self-memoir of expected
spicy anecdotes and perilous revelations. Not but that I could make
considerable mischief, and perhaps help my publisher in sales, if I
chose to make the most of the many celebrities, both American and
English, with whom I have had intercourse both at Albury and elsewhere.
My humble hospitalities and the constant welcome I have given to
strangers, have been like their author, proverbial; but that is no
reason why our converse, free and frank as private fellowship commands,
should be produced in print; naturally the host was ever generous, and
the guest--equally, of course--appreciative.

Perhaps though, not quite always: and I am tempted here to say just one
unpleasant word about the only one of my many American guests,
hospitably, nay almost affectionately treated, who wrote home to his
wife too disparagingly of his entertainer, his son having afterwards had
the bad taste to publish those letters in his father's Life. One
comfort, however, is that in "The Memoirs of Nathaniel Hawthorne," that
not very amiable genius praises no one of his English hosts (except,
indeed, a perhaps too open-handed London one), and that he was not known
(any more than Fenimore Cooper, whom years ago I found a rude customer
in New York) for a superabundance of good nature. When at Albury,
Hawthorne seemed to us superlatively envious: of our old house for
having more than seven gables; of its owner for a seemingly affluent
independence, as well as authorial fame; even of his friends when driven
by him to visit beautiful and hospitable Wotton; and in every word and
gesture openly entering his republican and ascetic protest against the
aristocratic old country; even to protesting, when we drove by a new
weather-boarded cottage, "Ha, that's the sort of house I prefer to see;
it's like one of ours at home." That we did not take to each other is no
wonder. This, then, is my answer to the unkindly remarks against me in
print of one who