MY DEAR GAY,--if[57] there be any disjointedness in this letter, you must lay it to the fact that I am officiating this morning as general nurseryman and babytender, and am consequently obliged every now and then to ripple the otherwise smooth current of my epistolary communications with such dishevelled oratorical flourishes as “kitser, kee--eetser!” “jigger jig, jigger jig!” and the like accompanied with whatever extemporary hushmoney may be within grasp in the shape of spoons, whistles, pieces of paper and rattles. As I can conceive of no severer punishment that could be inflicted on certain authors than to be Robinson Crusoed on some desolate island with no companion but the offspring of their brain, so I do not know of any blessing more absorbing of all the faculties, demanding more presence of mind and more of that eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty, but which in this case fails to attain it, than that of being islanded in a room eighteen feet square with the “sole daughter of one’s house and home.” Then, besides these parental responsibilities, there are the _aliena negotia centum_ which have in the present instance made a gap of three hours between this sentence and the last. Added to all these is the metallic pen which I resisted manfully, but to which I have succumbed at last, and which, while it obliterates all distinctions of chirography, has, in conjunction with the other accoutrements of easy writing (such as Reviews and newspapers), hastened the decline and fall, and finally made complete shipwreck of the letterwriters, as well as of the foliomakers. It is no longer ‘the mob of _gentlemen_ who write with ease,’ but the very mob itself--that _profanum vulgus_ whom Horace Naso (_sic_) would have us hate and keep at arm’s length--can buy steel pens by the gross and proceed Master of arts _per saltum_. We have got now to that pitch when uneducated men (self-educated they are called) are all the rage, and the only learned animals who continue to be popular are pigs. The public will rush after a paper which they are told is edited by a practical printer, and is eager to shape its ideas after the model of men who have none. We shall ere long see advertised “Easy lessons in Latin by a gentleman who can bring testimonials that he knows no more of the language than Mr. Senator Webster;” “The High School Reader, being a selection of popular pieces for reading and declamation by a Lady, who is just learning the alphabet under the distinguished tuition of herself, and who is nearly mistress of that delightful _mélange_ of literary miscellanies.” The injury to letters arising from an author’s losing that space for meditation which was formerly afforded him by the wise necessity of mending his pen is incalculable.