y
will do their work, and it will all come to good in the long run; but it
is not necessary that I should watch it or care for it. I did, indeed,
print a political sermon four months ago, and I said a few words in the
"Register" last week (which I will send you), but I am not the man to be
heard in these days. I can't take a side. . . .

Yours as always,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.

SHEFFIELD, May 7, 1860.

WELL, did I address you as a poet, Magnus; for none but a poet or
a Welshman could write such a reply. Do you know I am Welsh? So was
Elizabeth, Tudor; so is Fanny Kemble, and other good fellows.

Well, I take your poetry as if it were just as good as prose. But you
don't consider, my dear fellow, that if we make our visit when I go down
to preach for Bellows, that I can't preach for your Orthodox
friend. . . .

Oh, ay, I quite agree with you about leaving the world-melee to others.
For my part, I feel as if I were dead and buried long ago. You said,
awhile ago, that you did n't so well like to work as you once did.
Sensible, [254] that. I feel the same, in my bones--or brains. There it
is, you always say, what I think; except sometimes, when you scathe the
opponents,--for I am tenderhearted. I don't like to have people made
to feel so "bad." Seriously, I wonder that some of you editors are not
beaten to death every month. Ours is a much-enduring society. I could
enlarge, but I have n't time; for I must go and set out some trees--for
posterity.

With our love to your wife and all,

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Mrs. David Lane.

BOSTON, Dec. 1860.

DEAREST FRIEND (for I think friends draw closer to one another in
troublous times),--Indeed I am sad and troubled, under the most
favorable view that can be taken of our affairs; for though all this
should blow over, as I prevailingly believe and hope it will, yet the
crisis has brought out such a feeling at the South as we shall not
easily forget or forgive. To be sure, as the irritation of an arraigned
conscience, we may partly overlook it, as we do the irritation of a
blamed child,--as an arraigned, and, I add, not quite easy conscience;
for surely conscious virtue is calmer than the South is, today. I know
that other things are mixed up with this feeling of the South; but if
it felt that its moral position was high and honorable and unimpeachable
before the world, it would not fly out into this outrageous passion. If
the ground