MY DEAR BELLOWS,--I will wish you all a happy New York, (ahem! you see how naturally and affectionately my pen turns out the old beloved name)--a happy New Year. After all, it isn't so bad; a happy New Year and a happy New York must be very near neighbors with you. I sometimes wish they could have continued to be so with me, for those I have learnt to live with most easily and happily are generally in New York. Our beloved artists, the goodly Club, were a host to me by themselves. I wish I could be a host to them sometimes. Well, heigho! (pretty ejaculation to come into a New Year's greeting--but they come everywhere!) Heigho! I say submissively --things meet and match us, perhaps, better than we mean. I am not a clergyman--perhaps was never meant for one. I question our position more and more. We are not fairly thrown into the field of life. We do not fairly take the free and [231] unobstructed pressure of all surrounding society. We are hedged around with artificial barriers, built up by superstitious reverence and false respect. We are cased in peculiarity. We meet and mingle with trouble and sorrow,--enough of them, too much,--but our treatment of them gets hackneyed, worn, weary, and reluctant. They grapple with the world's strife and trial, but it is an armor. Our excision from the world's pleasure and intercourse, I doubt, is not good for us. We are a sort of moral eunuchs. To his Daughter Mary. WASHINGTON, June 19, 1853. THOUGH it is very hot, Though bladed corn faint in the noontide ray, And thermometers stand at ninety-three, And fingers feel like sticks of sealing-wax, Yet I will write thee. This evening I saw Professor Henry, who said he saw you at the Century Club last Wednesday evening; that le did not speak to you, but that you seemed to be enjoying yourself. I felt like shaking hands with him on the occasion, but restrained myself. But where are you, child, this blessed minute? . . . I would have you to know that it is a merit to write to somebody who is nowhere. Why in thunder don't you write to me? If I were nobody, I am somewhere. I hope you are enjoying yourself, but I can't think you can, conscientiously, without telling me of it. My love to the Bryants. I hope it may greet the Grand Panjandrum himself. Tell Mrs. C. I should write to her, but I have too much regard for her to think of [232] such a thing with the thermometer at 93 degrees, and that it is as much as I can do to keep cool at any time, when I think of her. To Mrs. David Lane. SHEFFIELD, Sept. 2, 1853.