I mean soon to comply with your kind invitation to come and see you, not on the above business, but because I think of writing a schoolbook,--or, at any rate, a book for the young,--and should highly prize your advice as to what is wanted, and how it should be achieved. I mean, as soon as possible,--that is to say, as soon as I can find a cheap, pleasant, and healthy residence,--to remove into the country, and bid farewell forever to this abominable city; for, now that my mother is gone, I have no longer anything to keep me here. Sophia and the children are pretty well. With my best regards to Mrs. Mann, I am, Very truly yours, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. P. S. Do pardon me for troubling you with this long letter: but I am glad to put you in possession of the facts, in case of accidents. I will insert here some letters that relate to this time, though written in 1884:-- PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND, September 15. DEAR MRS. LATHROP, . . . That matter of the memorial fountain, or monument [in honor of "The Town Pump "], which the death of Mrs. Brooks prevented our going on with, I trust may yet in the fullness of time be accomplished. I have a plan which may fructify, although some years may intervene before any decided steps can be taken. Perhaps it will be just as well to wait, after all, until some of those wretches who delight in vilifying your father perish from the face of the earth. Let us have patience. They are fast becoming superannuated, and the "venom of their spleen" will perish with them. They comprehend him not, and are willfully blind and deaf. Dr. Wheatland estimates that less than a score of these strange malignants are now to be met with on the streets of Salem. But he has not like me "Unaware, Ranging the woods to start a hare, Come to the mouth of the dark lair, Where growling low, a fierce old bear, Lies amid bones and blood." By the bye, I found once that Miss Savage had wholly forgotten Hawthorne's reference to the Town Pump which closes his Custom House chapter, and so I put "The Scarlet Letter" into my valise (she having lost her copy), and two or three weeks ago I called at her house and read her the passage. Afterwards, I dropped in to see Mullet, and I left the book with him, as he had not read it for many years. I think you will like to see a note he has written me, so I inclose it. Faithfully yours, GEORGE H. HOLDEN. February 5.