The _Massachusetts Quarterly_, which had been started in 1847 as an organ of more progressive thought than the _North American Review_, was under the management of Theodore Parker, and Lowell was evidently a welcome though not constant contributor, as this letter to the editor intimates:-- ELMWOOD, July 28, [1848]. MY DEAR SIR:--Do _you_ know where parsons go to who don’t believe in original sin? I think that your experience as an editor will bring you nearer orthodoxy by convincing you of the total depravity of contributors. I have no doubt that the plague of booksellers was sent to punish authors for their sins toward editors. Your note was so illegible that I was unable to make out that part of it in which you reproached me for my remissness. I shall choose rather to treasure it as containing I know not what commendations of my promptitude and punctuality. I will have it framed and glazed and exhibit it to editors inquiring my qualifications, as the enthusiastic testimony of the Rev. Theo. Parker, and fearlessly defy all detection. I assure you that it is not my fault that I did not send the enclosed[83] earlier. I have suffered all this summer with a severe pain in the head, which has entirely crippled me for a great part of the time. It is what people call a _fullness_ in the head, but its effect is to produce an entire emptiness. As it is, I am reluctant to send the article. I hardly know what is in it myself, but I am quite conscious that it is disjointed and wholly incomplete. I found it impossible to concentrate my mind upon it so as to give it any unity or entireness. Believe the writing it has worried me more than the not receiving it worried you. I send it as to a man in a strait to whom _anything_ will be useful. I throw it _quasi lignum naufrago._ If I had one of the cedarn columns of the temple, I would cast it overboard to you; but having only a shapeless log, I give you that, as being as useful to a drowning man as if it were already made into a Mercury. I have, you see, given directions to the printer to copy “The Hamadryad.” My copy is a borrowed one, and if you own one I should be obliged to you if you would send it to the printing-office, as your warning about not smutching, etc., would probably have more weight with your printers than mine. If you have no copy please let me know through the P. O. and I will send the one I have, as I have obtained permission to do. I should like to see the proofs, and as I am going to New York on Monday next to be absent a week, I should like to have them sent to me there to the care of S. H. Gay, 142 Nassau St., if it should be necessary to print before I return. If there is too much hurry, will you be good enough to look at them yourself.