I am, as ever, with great regard, Your friend, ORVILLE DEWEY. To the Same. ST. DAVID'S, March 30, 1874. DEAR BRYANT,--I send you enclosed my formal answer to your letter on behalf of my kind friends in New York and elsewhere, but I must have a little private word with you. . . . That speech of yours at the Cooper [A meeting at the Cooper Institute] was one of the best, if not the very best, of the little speeches that you have ever made. But good gracious! to think of your undertaking a Popular History of the United States! The only thing that troubles me for you is the taskwork of investigation. Supposing you to have the whole subject in your mind, nobody can write the story better than you can. Put fire into it, my dear Senior; or rather do what you can do,--for I have seen it,--so state things in your calm way as to put fire into others. [323] This is a great work that you have in hand; everybody will read it, and will be instructed by it, I trust, in sound politics, and stirred to holy patriotism. Ever yours, faithfully, ORVILLE DEWEY. To the Same, ST. DAVID'S, Aug. 6, 1874. WE have had a good deal of conference together, you and I, old friend, but I do not know that we ever discussed the subject of bores. You have raised questions about it, both for the next world and this, which, though I said nothing about them in my book, as you facetiously remark, it may surprise you to know are quite serious with me. Thus, if there is to be society in the next world, what can save it from the weariness of society in this,--save it, in other words, from bores? The spiritists say that Theodore Parker gives lectures there to delighted audiences. And, truth to say, I do not know of any other social occupation that would be so satisfactory as that of teaching or learning. What is all the highest conversation here, but that by which we help one another--teaching or being taught--to higher and juster thoughts? That would shake off the yoke of boredom under which so many groan now. If, instead of eternal surface-talk, we could strike down to reality, to something that interested our minds and hearts, fresh streams would flow over the arid waste of commonplace. Real thoughts would be a divining-rod. If, when a man calls upon me, he could, teach me something upon which he knows more than I do, or I could do the same for him, neither of us would be bored. [324] Do I not talk like a book? But, to be serious, so much am I bored with general society, that I am inclined to say I had rather live as I do here in Sheffield. Is n't Cummington a blessed place for that? But alas! it don't save you from being bored with letters,--vide, for example, this, perhaps, which I am now writing. But, O excellent man! though you never bored me in talk, you have lately bored into me; I will tell you how.