
It is a perfect shame I have not written you for so long, but I have been wofully woefully> lame and ill, and with a mind so weak and wandering that most of the time I have been actually unable to write. I now begin to feel a little better as the spring advances, though still greatly crippled.
I got your letter of last January (22d) and your card of Feb. 3rd from Elkton, telling of your lecturing, at which proof of your activity I greatly
rejoiced. I saw in the Tribune today that you are to give
your Lincoln lecture in Philadelphia.
I wonder if Dr. Bucke got off. I had a letter from him some time ago telling me he expected to go, but have not since heard from him.
C.W.E. and I were intensely amused at your "amiable clerk with a pen behind his ear," as applied to Stedman's book. The hit is palpable, like Hamlet's lunge.
I am glad I sent you Nencioni's article. We are after
it, hot foot, for I judge that it must be fine. I made an effort to get it here, but could not
find, however, where in Italy the Nuova Antologia is
published, though probably it is Florence or Milan. Kennedy
promises to help find the locale.
It pleases me greatly to hear that your eyes are all right, or nearly so. Do take care of them, and beware of draughts—so grateful, but so pernicious. Dr. Bigelow, our greatest physician in Boston of old time, used to say that the back of the neck was more vulnerable than the heel of Achilles, when exposed to a draught, and he always put up his coat collar when he got into an omnibus or horse-car.

I heard yesterday that John Burroughs is coming down here. I shall be glad to see him, though I owe him a grudge for his late proposition to murder all the sparrows. This gives points to Herod, and is worse than the slaughter of the innocents, because they were Jew babies and had objectionable little hook noses.
The winter has been infernal here since January, and March is not much better. I hope the Spring, just beginning to open, may put new life into you.
Glad to hear of the English "offering," which I wish was much more. I wish we could get up a boom on your books. That McKay is a poor publisher.

Wonders will never cease, and after all Houghton consented to publish my little work "Hamlet's Note-Book," a copy of which I hope to send you in a few days. Everyone else refused it. The prejudice against the Baconians is amazing. The last publisher to whom I offered it (Coombes, of New York) although I proposed to pay the cost of manufacture, wrote in reply that he would undertake it, push it with energy, and do everything for it in his power, if I would only consent that his imprint should not appear on the title page!!! I never answered his letter.
Write when you feel like it, and let me know if anything happens.