who brought it to
knock me up and wait for an answer!

"I am going to break my resolution of accepting no more public
entertainments, in favor of the originators of the printed document
overleaf. They live upon the confines of the Indian territory, some two
thousand miles or more west of New York! Think of my dining there! And
yet, please God, the festival will come off--I should say about the 12th
or 15th of next month.". . .

The printed document was a series of resolutions, moved at a public
meeting attended by all the principal citizens, judges, professors, and
doctors of St. Louis, urgently inviting to that city of the Far West the
distinguished writer then the guest of America, eulogizing his genius,
and tendering to him their warmest hospitalities. He was at Baltimore
when he closed his letter.

"BALTIMORE, _Tuesday, March 22d._

"I have a great diffidence in running counter to any impression formed
by a man of Maclise's genius, on a subject he has fully considered."
(Referring, apparently, to some remark by myself on the picture of the
Play-scene in _Hamlet_, exhibited this year.) "But I quite agree with
you about the King in _Hamlet_. Talking of Hamlet, I constantly carry in
my great-coat pocket the _Shakspeare_ you bought for me in Liverpool.
What an unspeakable source of delight that book is to me!

"Your Ontario letter I found here to-night: sent on by the vigilant and
faithful Colden, who makes every thing having reference to us or our
affairs a labor of the heartiest love. We devoured its contents,
greedily. Good Heaven, my dear fellow, how I miss you! and how I count
the time 'twixt this and coming home again! Shall I ever forget the day
of our parting at Liverpool! when even ---- became jolly and radiant in
his sympathy with our separation! Never, never shall I forget that time.
Ah! how seriously I thought then, and how seriously I have thought many,
many times since, of the terrible folly of ever quarreling with a true
friend, on good-for-nothing trifles! Every little hasty word that has
ever passed between us rose up before me like a reproachful ghost. At
this great distance, I seem to look back upon any miserable small
interruption of our affectionate intercourse, though only for the
instant it has never outlived, with a sort of pity for myself as if I
were another creature.

"I have bought another accordion. The steward lent me one, on the
passage out, an