through and win it, thus ending a life of much smoulder and scanty
fire in a blaze of glory. But I should smother myself in mud of my
own making. I mean to come to Boston soon, not for a week but for a
single day, and then I can talk about my sanitary prospects more
freely than I choose to write. I am not low-spirited, nor fanciful,
nor freakish, but look what seem to be realities in the face, and am
ready to take whatever may come. If I could but go to England now, I
think that the sea voyage and the 'Old Home' might set me all right.

"This letter is for your own eye, and I wish especially that no echo
of it may come back in your notes to me.

"P.S. Give my kindest regards to Mrs. F----, and tell her that one
of my choicest ideal places is her drawing-room, and therefore I
seldom visit it."

On Monday, the 28th of March, Hawthorne came to town and made my house
his first station on a journey to the South for health. I was greatly
shocked at his invalid appearance, and he seemed quite deaf. The light
in his eye was beautiful as ever, but his limbs seemed shrunken and his
usual stalwart vigor utterly gone. He said to me with a pathetic voice,
"Why does Nature treat us like little children! I think we could bear it
all if we knew our fate; at least it would not make much difference to
me now what became of me." Toward night he brightened up a little, and
his delicious wit flashed out, at intervals, as of old; but he was
evidently broken and dispirited about his health. Looking out on the bay
that was sparkling in the moonlight, he said he thought the moon rather
lost something of its charm for him as he grew older. He spoke with
great delight of a little story, called "Pet Marjorie," and said he had
read it carefully through twice, every word of it. He had much to say