stantly announced his version. (You may suppose what
it is and how it is done, when I tell you that it was playing within ten
days of the arrival out of the Christmas number.) Thereupon, Ticknor and
Fields gave him notice that he mustn't play it. Unto which he replied,
that he meant to play it and would play it. Of course he knew very well
that if an injunction were applied for against him, there would be an
immediate howl against my persecution of an innocent, and he played it.
Then the noble host of pirates rushed in, and it is being done, in some
mangled form or other, everywhere.

It touches me to read what you write of your poor mother. But, of
course, at her age, each winter counts heavily. Do give her my love, and
tell her that I asked you about her.

I am going on here at the same great rate, but am always counting the
days that lie between me and home. I got through the first fourth of my
readings on Friday, January 3rd. I leave for two readings at
Philadelphia this evening.

Being at Boston last Sunday, I took it into my head to go over the
medical school, and survey the holes and corners in which that
extraordinary murder was done by Webster. There was the
furnace--stinking horribly, as if the dismembered pieces were still
inside it--and there are all the grim spouts, and sinks, and chemical
appliances, and what not. At dinner, afterwards, Longfellow told me a
terrific story. He dined with Webster within a year of the murder, one
of a party of ten or twelve. As they sat at their wine, Webster suddenly
ordered the lights to be turned out, and a bowl of some burning mineral
to be placed on the table, that the guests might see how ghostly it made
them look. As each man stared at all the rest in the weird light, all
were horrified to see Webster _with a rope round his neck_, holding it
up, over the bowl, with his head jerked on one side, and his tongue
lolled out, representing a man being hanged!

Poking into his life and character, I find (what I would have staked my
head upon) that he was always a cruel man.

So no more at present from,

My dear Wilkie, yours ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.]

WESTMINSTER HOTEL, NEW YORK, _Sunday, Jan. 12th, 1868._

As I am off to Philadelphia this evening, I may as well post my letter
here. I have scarcely a word of news. My cold steadily refuses to leave
me; but otherwise I am as right as one can hope to be under this heavy
wo