Romance ready so soon as you want it. There are two or three
chapters ready to be written, but I am not yet robust enough to
begin, and I feel as if I should never carry it through.

"Besides, I want to prefix a little sketch of Thoreau to it,
because, from a tradition which he told me about this house of mine,
I got the idea of a deathless man, which is now taking a shape very
different from the original one. It seems the duty of a live
literary man to perpetuate the memory of a dead one, when there is
such fair opportunity as in this case: but how Thoreau would scorn
me for thinking that _I_ could perpetuate him! And I don't think so.

"I can think of no title for the unborn Romance. Always heretofore I
have waited till it was quite complete before attempting to name it,
and I fear I shall have to do so now. I wish you or Mrs. Fields
would suggest one. Perhaps you may snatch a title out of the
infinite void that will miraculously suit the book, and give me a
needful impetus to write it.

"I want a great deal of money..... I wonder how people manage to
live economically. I seem to spend little or nothing, and yet it
will get very far beyond the second thousand, for the present
year.... If it were not for these troublesome necessities, I doubt
whether you would ever see so much as the first chapter of the new
Romance.

"Those verses entitled 'Weariness,' in the last magazine, seem to me
profoundly touching. I too am weary, and begin to look ahead for the
Wayside Inn."