How naughtily I have neglected your cheering little letter, but it has been all my hands and none my heart which have done the naughty thing. I have wanted so to write you all the time, and intruders _would_ come between us and would have all my time. It was not always people. Oh, no,--work and care, and an o’ergrown correspondence intruded upon me, but I always solace myself with the thought that, if my friends will only have a _little patience_ with me, it will all come right, and their turn will come at last, and after a time the best of them learn me, and then in my easy, hurrying, slipshod way we come to be correspondents for aye. In the course of a year I say a great deal of nonsense to my correspondents, but I cannot always say it when my head and heart are the fullest of it. But first let me hasten to tell you what _cannot fail of being exceedingly gratifying_ to you, viz., that I am in a “_habit_” of receiving _daily visits from your husband_. But I was a long time in getting about it, however. I sent twice to his hotel, the great Pandemonium wherein he is incarcerated, before Sunday, but could get no tidings all the time. I was fearful he _was_ here and I missing him, and then I was almost certain that he was _not able_ to be here; but at length I could risk it no longer and wrote a hurried little note and dropped in the office for him, and sure enough it brought him. I was so _glad_ to see him and so much _better_ too, it is _splendid_; but then he had been trying to find me, and I in the meantime had, along with all Washington, removed! Just think of it, but I removed out of a burden of care to perfect ease and yet can _command_ just as much room as I desire in case I need, and if I have no need of it am not troubled with it--only that I have the trouble of furnishing, at which Doctor may inform you I am making very slow progress. I have so many things in Massachusetts _now_ that I want; my walls are perfectly bare, not a picture, and I have plenty to furnish them. It is vexatious that I didn’t “know to take them” when I was there. I fear to allow others to pack them.