merson,--Though my hand is shaking (as you sadly notice) I
determine to write you a little Note today. What a severance
there has been these many sad years past!--In the first days of
February I ended my weary Book; a totally worn-out man, got to
shore again after far the ugliest sea he had ever swam in. In
April or the end of March, when the book was published, I duly
handed out a Copy for Concord and you; it was to be sent by
mail; but, as my Publisher (a _new_ Chapman, very unlike the
_old_) discloses to me lately an incredible negligence on such
points, it is quite possible the dog may _not,_ for a long while,
have put it in the Post-Office (though he faithfully charged me
the postage of it, and was paid), and that the poor waif may
never yet have reached you! Patience: it will come soon
enough,--there are two thick volumes, and they will stand you a
great deal of reading; stiff rather than "light."

Since February last, I have been sauntering about in Devonshire,
in Chelsea, hither, thither; idle as a dry bone, in fact, a
creature sinking into deeper and deeper _collapse,_ after twelve
years of such mulish pulling and pushing; creature now good for
nothing seemingly, and much indifferent to being so in
permanence, if that be the arrangement come upon by the Powers
that made us. Some three or four weeks ago, I came rolling down
hither, into this old nook of my Birthland, to see poor old
Annandale again with eyes, and the poor remnants of kindred and
loved ones still left me there; I was not at first very lucky
(lost sleep, &c.); but am now doing better, pretty much got
adjusted to my new element, new to me since about six years
past,--the longest absence I ever had from it before. My Work
was getting desperate at that time; and I silently said to
myself, "We won't return till _it_ is done, or _you_ are done,
my man!"

This is my eldest living sister's house; one of the most rustic
Farmhouses in the world, but abounding in all that is needful to
me, especially in the truest, _silently_-active affection, the
humble generosity of which is itself medicine and balm. The
place is airy, on dry waving knolls cheerfully (with such _water_
as I never drank elsewhere, except at Malvern) all round me are
the Mountains, Cheviot and Galloway (three to fifteen miles off),
Cumberland and Yorkshire (say forty and fifty, with the Solway
brine and sands intervening). I live in total solitude,
sauntering moodily