“1st. Will I come to tea Thursday? I turn it over gingerly--it lies quite still and doesn’t seem likely to go off with a jerk. I think it harmless and answer ‘yes.’ I don’t like the artist being there with her pictures, for that may incur me the expense of several fibs, and I am not sure how many I have left. “2d. Do I know Miss----? This looks more suspicious and I give it a wide berth. “3d. Have I read ‘A Conversation in a Balcony’? Here I seem safe enough because I haven’t. So I reply boldly, ‘I have sent for it and will read it.’ “4th. Will I take your head off? This is a specific proposition and therefore less likely to have any _dolus_ hidden in it, and you offer me a prodigious bribe. But no, I won’t! I have a better opinion of your top-piece than you have (for the moment), and think it more useful and becoming where it is. Moreover, there was never head heard of that looked well after it was off except Charlotte Corday’s, and this is worth your consideration, and I am sure (since you are a woman) will have it. So we will wait. But I will come Thursday.” There is a playfulness about all Lowell’s letters during this last summer he was to spend in England, a pleasure in little things, as in his walks and encounters, and a deep draught of delight in the sea. His month at Whitby lengthened to six weeks, and he was reluctant to leave this secluded corner. Here he read Dante and Milton, Lope de Vega and Calderon, Byron, and some old French texts. He felt uncommonly well, and he even wrote a poem, “The Brook,” for which the _New York Ledger_ had offered a generous sum.