to-morrow. Fields and Mrs. Fields also dined
yesterday. She is a very nice woman, with a rare relish for humour and a
most contagious laugh. The Bostonians having been duly informed that I
wish to be quiet, really leave me as much so as I should be in
Manchester or Liverpool. This I cannot expect to last elsewhere; but it
is a most welcome relief here, as I have all the readings to get up. The
people are perfectly kind and perfectly agreeable. If I stop to look in
at a shop-window, a score of passers-by stop; and after I begin to read,
I cannot expect in the natural course of things to get off so easily.
But I every day take from seven to ten miles in peace.

Communications about readings incessantly come in from all parts of the
country. We take no offer whatever, lying by with our plans until after
the first series in New York, and designing, if we make a furore there,
to travel as little as possible. I fear I shall have to take Canada at
the end of the whole tour. They make such strong representations from
Montreal and Toronto, and from Nova Scotia--represented by St. John's
and Halifax--of the slight it would be to them, if I wound up with the
States, that I am shaken.

It is sad to see Longfellow's house (the house in which his wife was
burnt) with his young daughters in it, and the shadow of that terrible
story. The young undergraduates of Cambridge (he is a professor there)
have made a representation to him that they are five hundred strong,
and cannot get one ticket. I don't know what is to be done for them; I
suppose I must read there somehow. We are all in the clouds until I
shall have broken ground in New York, as to where readings will be
possible and where impossible.

Agassiz is one of the most natural and jovial of men. I go out
a-visiting as little as I can, but still have to dine, and what is
worse, sup pretty often. Socially, I am (as I was here before)
wonderfully reminded of Edinburgh when I had many friends in it.

Your account and Mamie's of the return journey to London gave me great
pleasure. I was delighted with your report of Wilkie, and not surprised
by Chappell's coming out gallantly.

My anxiety to get to work is greater than I can express, because time
seems to be making no movement towards home until I shall be reading
hard. Then I shall begin to count and count and count the upward steps
to May.

If ever you should be in a position to advise a traveller going on a sea
voyage, remem