your picture; and that the sure repairs of time and love and
active duty have brought peace to the orphan daughter's heart.
My friend Alcott must also have visited you before this, and you
have seen whether any relation could subsist betwixt men so
differently excellent. His wife here has heard of his arrival on
your coast,--no more.

I submitted to what seemed a necessity of petty literary
patriotism,--I know not what else to call it,--and took charge of
our thankless little _Dial,_ here, without subscribers enough to
pay even a publisher, much less any laborer; it has no penny for
editor or contributor, nothing but abuse in the newspapers, or,
at best, silence; but it serves as a sort of portfolio, to carry
about a few poems or sentences which would otherwise be
transcribed and circulated; and always we are waiting when
somebody shall come and make it good. But I took it, as I said,
and it took me, and a great deal of good time, to a small
purpose. I am ashamed to compute how many hours and days these
chores consume for me. I had it fully in my heart to write at
large leisure in noble mornings opened by prayer or by readings
of Plato or whomsoever else is dearest to the Morning Muse, a
chapter on Poetry, for which all readings, all studies, are but
preparation; but now it is July, and my chapter is rudest
beginnings. Yet when I go out of doors in the summer night, and
see how high the stars are, I am persuaded that there is time
enough, here or somewhere, for all that I must do; and the good
world manifests very little impatience.

Stearns Wheeler, the Cambridge tutor, a good Grecian, and the
editor, you will remember, of your American Editions, is going to