
I duly got your letter of May 5th and was very glad to hear from you. I sent you a letter which came for you on Monday, and which I hope you got, and herewith enclose another which Ramsdell left for you.
I earnestly hope George will be better when this reaches you. We all felt sobered to know that he was so badly. The turn in the weather today, I think will be good for him.
I can well imagine how you must have felt to see him so, and how sad it must be for
your
mother.
I enclose a letter I got from that child of a burnt father, Allen, which you can bring back with you when you come. It is truly Pecksniffian, and seems to have been written on all-fours. You will see that it ends the matter of publishing the book, and he doesn't say a word about John Burroughs' book, but of course that is understood to be declined also. I have written him, saying that John will at once put the book to press himself.
I had another letter from Raymond yesterday, very kind
and
friendly. He evidently does not yet know of the Allen–Carleton decision.
Part of it is about my coming upon the Times—a sort of hankering treatment of the subject,
but no offer, which of course he couldn't well make, not knowing exactly how useful
or available my talent would be to him. He has not heard that I was in New York. I
shall write him—today, if I can.
I think, on the whole, it is probably altogether best that Carleton should have nothing to do with "Leaves of Grass," though I would well enough like to have him publish the "Notes."
—I write in a hurry, nearly on mail time. Nelly charged me to send you her love. Your letter was very sweet. I
think a young girl finding herself beloved or admired by some one unsuspected
before, must feel as I did when I read how the household thought of me. But I didn't
lay myself out at all, as you say, and moreover, the evening I was there I had a
shocking headache.
Give my loving remembrance to all, especially your mother. I
have not yet succeeded in telling you (you know we were interrupted each time we
began to talk of it,) how deeply she affected me. Her cheerfulness, her infinite
gentleness and tenderness, were like the deep smile of the evening sky. As
I saw her that night, with the children on each side, and each leaning a head upon
her, I thought of the Madonna grown old.
Charley bade me send you his love. He has been in the most
extraordinary jolly humor all this week. It is as if the Cheeryble Brothers were rolled into one. The Times has done him the recent honor of copying at length, and devoting an
editorial to, besides, one of his late letters to the Standard, in which he comes the bloody Roman centurion on a batch of
politicians, sparing not one.
H. Clapp will end by becoming a respectable citizen. When once a man enters upon the downward path, &c. Like De Quincey's warning against the practice of murder, on the ground that it leads to procrastination and Sabbath breaking, so one can see as the guilty result of Bohemianism, a place in the Common Council or Board of Aldermen!
Good bye. I hope George is better today.
Your very faithful W.D.O'C.