You mustn’t be disheartened. If you had written a foolish thing, don’t you see?--nobody would be attacking it. People don’t bring artillery to bear on soap-bubbles, but wait till they burst of themselves. Don’t allow yourself to be shaken from that equipoise of good sense and good temper that drew my attention so strongly in your first article. Above all, don’t be drawn into any controversy. Keep straight on, as if nothing had happened, and if you have anything in you be sure the world will find it out. Publicity is one of the painful necessities of authorship. For my own part, I would give all the praise I ever received for the right to be valued simply for my personal good qualities alone. But you must resign yourself. You have given everybody who can command pen, ink, and paper the right to talk flippantly and ignorantly and unfeelingly of things into which you have put your very heart’s blood. But don’t be disheartened. If you honestly _try to think_ (and it was because you seemed to me to do so that I felt an interest in you) you will come out right in the long run. If you have the true quality you will at last get the power of _thinking_, the only abiding satisfaction and security for happiness which this life or the other for that matter affords, a thing rarer than is generally supposed. Really to think is to see things as they are, and when we have once got firm foot-hold on that rock of ages, our own little trials and triumphs take their true proportions, and are as indifferent to us, morally, I mean, as the changes of the weather. I think you have the root of the matter in you, that is, that you are in earnest to do honest work, and not to flaunt in the newspapers. For that reason I wish to help you all I can. Don’t think I am writing such letters as this every week. On the contrary, I am shy of writing letters at all, especially to women. But whenever a word from me will cheer you, you shall have it. I have directed two books to be sent you by express and beg you to accept them as a token of sincere esteem from your friend, J. R. LOWELL.