Every one nowadays can write decently and nobody writes well. “Painfulness” is obsolete as a thing as well as in the capacity of a noun. No more Horace Walpoles, no more Baxters, and Whole Duties of men! But one would think that I had the whole summer before me for the writing of this letter. Let me come a little nearer the matter in hand. I wish a distinct understanding to exist between us in regard to my contributions for the _Standard_. When Mrs. Chapman first proposed that I should become a contributor I told her frankly that it was a duty for which (having commenced author very early and got indurated in certain modes of authorship and life) I was totally unfitted. I was satisfied with the _Standard_ as it was. The paper has never been so good since I have seen it, and no abolitionist could reasonably ask a better. I feared that an uncoalescing partnership of several minds might deprive the paper of that _unity_ of conception and purpose in which the main strength of every understanding lies. This, however, I did not urge, because I knew that a change was to be made at any rate. At the same time I was not only willing but desirous that my name should appear, because I scorned to be indebted for any share of my modicum of popularity to my abolitionism without incurring at the same time whatever odium might be attached to a complete identification with a body of heroic men and women whom not to love and admire would prove me unworthy of either of those sentiments, and whose superiors in all that constitutes true manhood and womanhood I believe never existed. There were other considerations which weighed heavily with me to decline the office altogether. In the first place, I was sure that Mrs. Chapman and Mr. Garrison greatly overrated my popularity and the advantage which it would be to the paper to have my name attached to it. I am not flattering myself (I have too good an opinion of myself to do so), but judge from something Garrison said to me. It is all nonsense. However it may be in that glorious Hereafter (toward which no man who is good for anything can help casting half an eye) the reputation of a poet who has a high idea of his vocation, is resolved to be true to that vocation and hates humbug, must be small in his generation. The thing matters nothing to me, one way or the other, except when it chances to _take in_ those whom I respect, as in the present case. I am _teres atque rotundus_, a microcosm in myself, my own author, public, critic, and posterity, and care for no other. But we abolitionists must get rid of a habit we have fallen into of affirming all the geese who come to us from the magic circle of Respectability to be swans. I said so about Longfellow and I said so about myself.