But you will believe--if you still believe in me--that I have seized this small paper, only that I may not send you preserved in cold ink those fruits of travel that I hope one day to shake upon you, warm from the tongue. I am passing a brace of days only in Boston, having as yet seen no one, and in despair and disgust at the storm. You, I think of in Lenox--which is a summer spot only to my memory; alas! with nothing summery now, I fancy, but your rage at the equinoctial. Does Mrs. Hawthorne yet remember that she sent me a golden key to the studio of Crawford, in Rome? I have neither forgotten that, nor any smallest token of her frequent courtesy in the Concord days. Such be our days forever! Yours truly, GEORGE W. CURTIS. Among many messages from friends there was a welcome note from Cambridge:-- MY DEAR HAWTHORNE,--Mr. Duyckinck and his friend Mr. Beekman, of New York, having read your "Twice-Told Tales" with great wonderment and delight, "desire you of more acquaintance." I therefore am happy to make you known to each other. Yours truly, LONGFELLOW. June 30. Mr. G. P. R. James, the novelist, lived somewhat near, but writes to Hawthorne between calls:-- STOCKBRIDGE, MASS., 4th July, 1851. MY DEAR MR. HAWTHORNE,--The night before last I received the two portentous bundles [essays by Miss Sedgwick's scholars]. Last night--though to give up reading "The House of the Seven Gables" for the purpose of reading a packet of seventy gabbles was like tearing the flesh from my bones--I set to, and got through ten of the compositions--six of the minors and four of the majors. . . . Of what I have read, I am inclined to say, "the devil a barrel a better herring." All contain great inaccuracies of style and grammar; and few display a trace of original thought. As far as I have gone, it is all desk-fancy and "book larning"--parrotism, in short. . . . I was exceedingly sorry to find, from my son and daughter, that you could not bring your young people to our haymaking on Wednesday. But they consoled me with a promise, in your name, of bringing them another day to spend the whole of it with us. I hold you to it; and if you fail, or fail of prompt performance, I shall look upon you as faithless, and mans worn to Yours ever, G. P. R. JAMES. Mrs. Hawthorne writes on:--