would be far easier. The grand profit for me is
that people would understand better what I mean, and come better
about me if I lectured again, which seems the only way of getting
any wages at all for me here at present. Pray meditate my
project, if it be not already too late, hear what your Booksellers
say about it, and understand that I will not in any case set to
printing till I hear from you in answer to this.
How my sheet is filling with dull talk about mere economics! I
must still add that the _Lecturing_ I talked of, last time, is
verily over now; and well over. The superfine people listened
to the rough utterance with patience, with favor, increasing to
the last. I sent you a Newspaper once, to indicate that it was
in progress. I know not yet what the money result is; but I
suppose it will enable us to exist here thriftily another year;
not without hope of at worst doing the like again when the time
comes. It is a great novelty in my lot; felt as a very
considerable blessing; and really it has arrived, if it have
arrived, in _due_ time, for I had begun to get quite impatient of
the other method. Poverty and Youth may do; Poverty and Age go
badly together.--For the rest, I feel fretted to fiddle-strings;
my head and heart all heated, sick,--ah me! The question as ever
is: Rest. But then where? My Brother invites us to come to
Rome for the winter; my poor sick Wife might perhaps profit by
it; as for me, Natty Leatherstocking's lodge in the Western
Wood, I think, were welcomer still. I have a great mind, too, to
run off and see my Mother, by the new railways. What we shall
do, whether not stay quietly here, must remain uncertain for a
week or two. Write you always hither, till you hear otherwise.
The _Orations_ were right welcome; my _Madeira_ one, returned
thence with Sterling, was circulating over the West of England.
Sterling and Harriet stretched out the right hand with wreathed
smiles. I have read, a second or third time. Robert Southey has
got a copy, for his own behoof and that of _Lake_land: if he
keep his word as to _me,_ he may do as much for you, or more.
Copies are at Cambridge; among the Oxonians too; I have with
stingy discretion distributed all my copies but two. Old Rogers,
a grim old Dilettante, full of sardonic sense, was heard saying,
"It is German Poetry given out in American Prose." Friend
Emerson ought to be content;--and has now above all things, as I
said,
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