d to health now,
however. Ask my brother about us--you will find him at Bliss's
publishing office, where he is gone to edit Bliss's new paper--left here
last Monday. Make his and his wife's acquaintance. Take Mrs. T. to see
them as soon as they are fixed.

Livy is up, and the prince keeps her busy and anxious these latter days
and nights, but I am a bachelor up stairs and don't have to jump up and
get the soothing syrup--though I would as soon do it as not, I assure
you. (Livy will be certain to read this letter.)

Tell Harmony (Mrs. T.) that I do hold the baby, and do it pretty
handily, too, although with occasional apprehensions that his loose head
will fall off. I don't have to quiet him--he hardly ever utters a cry.
He is always thinking about something. He is a patient, good little
baby.

Smoke? I always smoke from 3 till 5 Sunday afternoons--and in New York
the other day I smoked a week, day and night. But when Livy is well I
smoke only those two hours on Sunday. I'm "boss" of the habit, now, and
shall never let it boss me any more. Originally, I quit solely on Livy's
account, (not that I believed there was the faintest reason in the
matter, but just as I would deprive myself of sugar in my coffee if she
wished it, or quit wearing socks if she thought them immoral), and I
stick to it yet on Livy's account, and shall always continue to do so,
without a pang. But somehow it seems a pity that you quit, for Mrs. T.
didn't mind it if I remember rightly. Ah, it is turning one's back upon
a kindly Providence to spurn away from us the good creature he sent to
make the breath of life a luxury as well as a necessity, enjoyable as
well as useful, to go and quit smoking when then ain't any sufficient
excuse for it! Why, my old boy, when they use to tell me I would shorten
my life ten years by smoking, they little knew the devotee they were
wasting their puerile word upon--they little knew how trivial and
valueless I would regard a decade that had no smoking in it! But I won't
persuade you, Twichell--I won't until I see you again--but then we'll
smoke for a week together, and then shut off again.

I would have gone to Hartford from New York last Saturday, but I got so
homesick I couldn't. But maybe I'll come soon.

No, Sir, catch me in the metropolis again, to get homesick.

I didn't know Warner had a book out.

We send oceans and continents of love--I have worked myself down, today.

Yrs