There lies before me a mass of private letters to me from Stedman, dating back to November 2, 1873, when he greeted me for the first time in a kinship we had just discovered. We had the same great-grandfather, though each connection was through the mother, we being alike great-grandchildren of the Reverend Aaron Cleveland, Jr., from whom President Grover Cleveland was also descended. At the time of this mutual discovery Stedman was established in New York, and although I sometimes met him in person, I can find no letters from him until after a period of more than ten years, when he was engaged in editing his Library of American Literature. He wrote to me afterwards, and often with quite cousinly candor,—revealing frankly his cares, hopes, and sorrows, but never with anything coarse or unmanly. All his enterprises were confided to me so far as literature was concerned, and I, being nearly ten years older, felt free to say what I thought of them. I wished, especially, however, to see him carry out a project of translations from the Greek pastoral poetry of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. The few fragments given at the end of his volumes had always delighted me and many other students, while his efforts at the “Agamemnon” of Æschylus dealt with passages too formidable in their power for any one but Edward FitzGerald to undertake. After a few years of occasional correspondence, there came a lull. Visiting New York rarely, I did not know of Stedman’s business perplexities till they came upon me in the following letter, which was apparently called out by one of mine written two months before. 71 West 54th Street, NEW YORK, July 12th, ’82.