letter just brought me by the mail from Moreau, Tazewell
County, Iowa. It is written by Follansbee, in a good
cheerful hand. How glad I am to hear from Follansbee!
Yes; but do I care one straw whether Follansbee planted
spring wheat or winter wheat? Not I. All I care for is
Follansbee's way of telling it. All these are the
remarks by which Haliburton explains the character of the
messages he sent in reply to George Orcutt's autographs,
which were so thoroughly satisfactory.

Should he say Mr. Borie had left the Navy Department
and Mr. Robeson come in? Should he say the Lords had
backed down on the Disendowment Bill? Should he say the
telegraph had been landed at Duxbury? Should he say
Ingham had removed to Tamworth? What did they care for
this? What does anybody ever care for facts? Should he
say that the State Constable was enforcing the liquor law
on whiskey, but was winking at lager? All this would
take him a week, in the most severe condensation,--
and for what good? as Haliburton asked. Yet these were
the things that the newspapers told, and they told
nothing else. There was a nice little poem of Jean
Ingelow's in a Transcript Haliburton had with him. He
said he was really tempted to spell that out. It was
better worth it than all the rest of the newspaper stuff,
and would be remembered a thousand years after that was
forgotten. "What they wanted," says Haliburton, "was
sentiment. That is all that survives and is eternal."
So he and Rob. laid out their cambric thus:--