John Neal lectures here to-night. I have not seen him, and I do not know whether I shall hear him, for if I get a package from you to-day, as I hope I shall, I shall hardly have 25 cents left to buy a ticket with. So you think we have succeeded. They are the pleasantest words I have heard since I have been here. But we must not feel too sure yet. I think we _shall_ succeed. Folks here (some of them) say that we shall beyond our utmost expectation.... Saturday.... You shall have some copy from me on _Wednesday_ morning if I get blind by it. Where is Brownson? Don’t print nonsense. Better not be out till the middle of March. But you are only trying to frighten me. Do not print nonsense, for God’s sake. Print the history of Mesmerism. Write an article on Japan. If I were to read over your letters again in order to answer them categorically, I should not be able to use my eyes for a week. You do not recollect that I undergo an application or an operation _every day_. If I could _see_ you for ten minutes I could arrange all. I perhaps may come on and return hither again. _Do not hint_ this to any one, for if Maria heard of it, she would be expecting anxiously every day. I am sick to death of this place, yet it does me good spiritually to stay here. I _must_ not write any more. In your next letter ask all questions and I will answer.... Lowell stayed on in New York on account of his eyes till the end of February. At a period when Mrs. Child could gravely write and publish in a book “Letters from New York,” to go to New York from Cambridge was nearly equivalent to a winter abroad. As his letters to Carter show, with the disabilities under which he labored Lowell could do little at reading or writing, and he used the opportunity for social occupation. Page he had already come to know, and he had made the acquaintance through the _Miscellany_ of Charles F. Briggs, whom now he took into warm friendship. Mr. Briggs was a diligent man of letters, best known to the public of that day as “Harry Franco,” and through him Lowell fell in with many writers and book people. But he was most impatient to return, and now that his magazine had ceased he found himself with no routine labors, but with a mind full to overflowing. The real pursuit of Lowell during 1843 was poetry, and poetry of a lofty character. In the Ode which he wrote in 1841 beginning,-- “In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder”--