impossible, for me to keep up the wide range of correspondence which has
become a large part of my occupation, and tends to absorb all the vital
force which is left me, I wish to enter into a final explanation with
the well-meaning but merciless taskmasters who have now for many years
been levying their daily tax upon me. I have preserved thousands of
their letters, and destroyed a very large number, after answering most
of them. A few interesting chapters might be made out of the letters
I have kept,--not only such as are signed by the names of well-known
personages, but many from unknown friends, of whom I had never heard
before and have never heard since. A great deal of the best writing the
languages of the world have ever known has been committed to leaves that
withered out of sight before a second sunlight had fallen upon them. I
have had many letters I should have liked to give the public, had their
nature admitted of their being offered to the world. What straggles
of young ambition, finding no place for its energies, or feeling its
incapacity to reach the ideal towards which it was striving! What
longings of disappointed, defeated fellow-mortals, trying to find a
new home for themselves in the heart of one whom they have amiably
idealized! And oh, what hopeless efforts of mediocrities and
inferiorities, believing in themselves as superiorities, and stumbling
on through limping disappointments to prostrate failure! Poverty comes
pleading, not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a
purchaser for its unmarketable wares. The unreadable author particularly
requests us to make a critical examination of his book, and report
to him whatever may be our verdict,--as if he wanted anything but
our praise, and that very often to be used in his publisher's
advertisements.

But what does not one have to submit to who has become the martyr--the
Saint Sebastian--of a literary correspondence! I will not dwell on the
possible impression produced on a sensitive nature by reading one's own
premature obituary, as I have told you has been my recent experience.
I will not stop to think whether the urgent request for an autograph by
return post, in view of the possible contingencies which might render
it the last one was ever to write, is pleasing or not. At threescore and
twenty one must expect such hints of what is like to happen before long.
I suppose, if some near friend were to watch one who was looking over
s