d, came to me.

The decision once taken, he was in his usual fever until its
difficulties were disposed of. The objections to separation from the
children led at first to the notion of taking them, but this was as
quickly abandoned; and what remained to be overcome yielded readily to
the kind offices of Macready, the offer of whose home to the little ones
during the time of absence, though not accepted to the full extent, gave
yet the assurance needed to quiet natural apprehensions. All this,
including an arrangement for publication of such notes as might occur to
him on the journey, took but a few days; and I was reading in my
chambers a letter he had written the previous day from Broadstairs, when
a note from him reached me, written that morning in London, to tell me
he was on his way to take share of my breakfast. He had come overland by
Canterbury after posting his first letter, had seen Macready the
previous night, and had completed some part of the arrangements. This
mode of rapid procedure was characteristic of him at all similar times,
and will appear in the few following extracts from his letters:

"Now" (19th September) "to astonish you. After balancing, considering,
and weighing the matter in every point of view, I HAVE MADE UP MY MIND
(WITH GOD'S LEAVE) TO GO TO AMERICA--AND TO START AS SOON AFTER
CHRISTMAS AS IT WILL BE SAFE TO GO." Further information was promised
immediately; and a request followed, characteristic as any he could have
added to his design of traveling so far away, that we should visit once
more together the scenes of his boyhood. "On the ninth of October we
leave here. It's a Saturday. If it should be fine dry weather, or
anything like it, will you meet us at Rochester, and stop there two or
three days to see all the lions in the surrounding country? Think of
this. . . . If you'll arrange to come, I'll have the carriage down, and
Topping; and, supposing news from Glasgow don't interfere with us, which
I fervently hope it will not, I will insure that we have much
enjoyment."

Three days later than that which announced his resolve, the subject was
resumed: "I wrote to Chapman & Hall asking them what they thought of it,
and saying I meant to keep a note-book, and publish it for half a guinea
or thereabouts, on my return. They instantly sent the warmest possible
reply, and said they had taken it for granted I would go, and had been
speaking of it only the day before. I have begged them to ma