ne 6th, 1867._

MY DEAR WILLS,

I cannot tell you how warmly I feel your letter, or how deeply I
appreciate the affection and regard in which it originates. I thank you
for it with all my heart.

You will not suppose that I make light of any of your misgivings if I
present the other side of the question. Every objection that you make
strongly impresses me, and will be revolved in my mind again and again.

When I went to America in '42, I was so much younger, but (I think) very
much weaker too. I had had a painful surgical operation performed
shortly before going out, and had had the labour from week to week of
"Master Humphrey's Clock." My life in the States was a life of continual
speech-making (quite as laborious as reading), and I was less patient
and more irritable then than I am now. My idea of a course of readings
in America is, that it would involve far less travelling than you
suppose, that the large first-class rooms would absorb the whole course,
and that the receipts would be very much larger than your estimate,
unless the demand for the readings is ENORMOUSLY EXAGGERATED ON ALL
HANDS. There is considerable reason for this view of the case. And I can
hardly think that all the speculators who beset, and all the private
correspondents who urge me, are in a conspiracy or under a common
delusion.

* * * * *

I shall never rest much while my faculties last, and (if I know myself)
have a certain something in me that would still be active in rusting and
corroding me, if I flattered myself that I was in repose. On the other
hand, I think that my habit of easy self-abstraction and withdrawal into
fancies has always refreshed and strengthened me in short intervals
wonderfully. I always seem to myself to have rested far more than I have
worked; and I do really believe that I have some exceptional faculty of
accumulating young feelings in short pauses, which obliterates a
quantity of wear and tear.

My worldly circumstances (such a large family considered) are very good.
I don't want money. All my possessions are free and in the best order.
Still, at fifty-five or fifty-six, the likelihood of making a very great
addition to one's capital in half a year is an immense consideration....
I repeat the phrase, because there should be something large to set
against the objections.

I dine with Forster to-day, to talk it over. I have no doubt he will
urge most of your objections and parti