"It was only on my recent return from Europe that I had the pleasure of receiving your letter of the thirtieth of April last. I have since given to its strictures the earnest consideration to which the character and standing of the writer and his friendly tone justly entitle them. "If, on a careful review, I had found cause to believe that the tendency of my work is such as you represent, it would be little consolation to feel that it was prompted by those good intentions which you are candid and courteous enough to ascribe to me. Prudence, painstaking discrimination, severe scrutiny of evidence, especially for the novel or the extraordinary, are, in an author, duties as imperative as good faith and uprightness; nor should he escape reprehension by pleading the one, if it appear that he has neglected the others. "But my conscience acquits me of neglecting, save by exceptional inadvertence, reasonable precautions. That these may, in some cases, have proved unavailing, is the lot of human effort. So far, however, after ten months' probation, I have had doubts cast upon a single narrative only, out of the seventy or eighty which my volume contains; and it is to the credit of your sagacity that the story thus discredited is that of the Livonian Schoolteacher, the very one to the evidence for which you chiefly take exception. It was part of my business in visiting Europe to test a case, to the conflicting evidence regarding which, about three months after the publication of 'Footfalls,' my attention was called by a friend; and as my inquiries, though they showed some foundation for the story, tended to discredit its details, I did what duty required of me; I omitted in the English edition, recently issued, and in the tenth American edition, the story in question, adding an explanatory note, and substituting a narrative entitled 'The Two Sisters,' relative to a similar phenomenon, and of which a copy is herewith inclosed. You will find the names of the two witnesses initialized only; but I am authorized by these ladies to communicate to you, if you desire to follow up the case, their names--neither unknown nor little esteemed--and their residence, within a day's easy journey of Cambridge. "In two of the narratives, the 'Wynyard apparition' and 'Gaspar,' I have obtained and inserted in the latest editions important additional vouchers.