Always your faithful Friend. [Sidenote: Mr. Fitz-Greene Halleck.] CARLTON HOUSE, _February 14th, 1842._ MY DEAR SIR, Will you come and breakfast with me on Tuesday, the 22nd, at half-past ten? Say yes. I should have been truly delighted to have a talk with you to-night (being quite alone), but the doctor says that if I talk to man, woman, or child this evening I shall be dumb to-morrow. Believe me, with true regard, Faithfully your Friend. [Sidenote: Mr. W. C. Macready.] BALTIMORE, _March 22nd, 1842._ MY DEAR FRIEND, I beg your pardon, but you were speaking of rash leaps at hasty conclusions. Are you quite sure you designed that remark for me? Have you not, in the hurry of correspondence, slipped a paragraph into my letter which belongs of right to somebody else? When did you ever find me leap at wrong conclusions? I pause for a reply. Pray, sir, did you ever find me admiring Mr. ----? On the contrary, did you never hear of my protesting through good, better, and best report that he was not an open or a candid man, and would one day, beyond all doubt, displease you by not being so? I pause again for a reply. Are you quite sure, Mr. Macready--and I address myself to you with the sternness of a man in the pit--are you quite sure, sir, that you do not view America through the pleasant mirage which often surrounds a thing that has been, but not a thing that is? Are you quite sure that when you were here you relished it as well as you do now when you look back upon it. The early spring birds, Mr. Macready, _do_ sing in the groves that you were, very often, not over well pleased with many of the new country's social aspects. Are the birds to be trusted? Again I pause for a reply.