DEAR FRIEND,--. . . Mrs. __ reported you very much occupied with documents, papers, letters, and what not, on matters connected with the Sanitary. I should like to have you recognize that there are other people who need to be healed and helped besides soldiers; and that there are other interests beside public ones to be looked after. Are not all interests individual interests in [274] the "last analysis," as the philosophers say? But I am afraid you don't believe in analysis at all. Generality, combination, is everything with you. One part of the human race is rolled up into a great bundle of sickness, wounds, and misery; and the other is nothing but a benevolent blanket to be wrapped round it. And if any one thread--videlicet I--should claim to have any separate existence or any little tender feeling by itself, immediately the manager of the Great Sanitary Fair says, "Hush! lie down! you are nothing but a part of the blanket." But a truce to nonsense. Since writing the foregoing, the news has come from Atlanta. Oh! if Grant could do the same thing to Lee's army, not only would the Rebellion be broken, but the Copperhead party would be scattered to the winds! Do you read anything this summer but reports from Borrioboola Gha? The best book I have read--Ticknor's "Prescott," Alger's "Future Life," Furness's "Veil Partly Lifted," etc., notwithstanding--is De Tocqueville's "Ancient Regime and the Revolution." Your old friend, ORVILLE DEWEY. To the Same. Nov. 9, 1864. CHARMING! I will be as bad as I can. Talk about being "useful to the world"! If the people that do the most good, or get it to be clone,--same thing,--are to be sought for, are n't they the wicked ones? Where had been the philanthropists, heroes, martyrs, but for them? [275] Where had been Clark, and Wilberforce, but for the slave-catchers? Where Howard, but for cruel sailors? Where Brace, but for naughty boys? Where our noble President of the Sanitary, but for the wicked Rebels? And how should I ever have known that Mrs. Lane was capable of such a fine and eloquent indignation, if, instead of being a bad boy, "neglecting the opportunities" thrown in my way, I had been just a good sort of middle-aged man, "in the prime of life," doing as I ought? Really, there ought to be a society got up to make bad people,--they are so useful! I heard a man say of Bellows, the other day in the cars, "He is a noble man!" And it was an Orthodox, formerly a member and elder of Dr. Spring's church. And what do you think he said to me? "Don't you remember me?"--"No."--"Don't you remember when you were a young man, in Dodge Sayre's bookstore, that Jasper Corning and I set up a Sunday-school for colored people in Henry Street, and that you taught in it for several months? And a good teacher you were, too." Not a bit of it. Oh, dear me! I hope there are some other good things which I have done in the world that I don't remember. "A grand