speak to you. Generally it has been late and I have not liked to
disturb him by sitting up after him, and so I could not write since
he returned, though I wished very much to tell you about him, ever
since he came home. He came back unlooked for that day; and when I
heard a step on the piazza, I was lying on a couch and feeling quite
indisposed. But as soon as I saw him I was frightened out of all
knowledge of myself,--so haggard, so white, so deeply scored with
pain and fatigue was the face, so much more ill he looked than I
ever saw him before. He had walked from the station because he saw
no carriage there, and his brow was streaming with a perfect rain,
so great had been the effort to walk so far.... He needed much to
get home to me, where he could fling off all care of himself and
give way to his feelings, pent up and kept back for so long,
especially since his watch and ward of most excellent, kind Mr.
Ticknor. It relieved him somewhat to break down as he spoke of that
scene.... But he was so weak and weary he could not sit up much, and
lay on the couch nearly all the time in a kind of uneasy somnolency,
not wishing to be read to even, not able to attend or fix his
thoughts at all. On Saturday he unfortunately took cold, and, after
a most restless night, was seized early in the morning with a very
bad stiff neck, which was acutely painful all Sunday. Sunday night,
however, a compress of linen wrung in cold water cured him, with
belladonna. But he slept also most of this morning.... He could as
easily build London as go to the Shakespeare dinner. It tires him so
much to get entirely through his toilet in the morning, that he has
to lie down a long time after it. To-day he walked out on the
grounds, and could not stay ten minutes, because I would not let him
sit down in the wind, and he could not bear any longer exercise. He
has more than lost all he gained by the journey, by the sad event.
From being the nursed and cared for,--early to bed and late to