The point to be noted, however, is that with all this pressure of need, Lowell knew himself so well that he would not, even when a golden bait was dangled before him, accept invitations to write which required of him the diligence and the punctuality of the hack workman. No. He would attend to his college duties, do what he could for the _North American_, and accept the occasional opportunity which offered for reading a lecture. He honored his art, and he refused to make it a perfunctory task. His old friend Robert Carter was now editor of _Appleton’s Journal_, and very naturally sought contributions from Lowell, but Lowell replied in a letter written 11 March, 1870: “Many thanks for your _Journal_, which I have looked through with a great deal of pleasure, and which I should think likely to do good in raising the public taste. “I am much obliged to you also for your proposal, though I cannot accept it. I have not time. I have not that happy gift of inspired knowledge so common in this country, and work more and more slowly toward conclusions as I get older. I give on an average twelve hours a day to study (after my own fashion), but I find real knowledge slow of accumulation. Moreover, I shall be too busy in the college for a year or two yet. It is not the career I should have chosen, and I half think I was made for better things--but I must make the best of it. Between ourselves, I declined lately an offer of $4000 a year from ---- to write four pages monthly in----. “It takes me a good while to be sure I am right. A five or six page notice in the next N. A. R.[45] will have cost me a fortnight’s work of a microscopic kind. My pay must be in a sense of honest thoroughness.”