ndness has, and I
will acknowledge the one without [311] waiting for the other; especially
as it is not a case where one feels it expedient to give thanks for
a book before he has read it. We all know the quality of this, from
passages of the work printed in advance. It will be the translation into
English of the Iliad, I think, though not professing to be learned in
translations of Homer, still less in the original.

I read your preface in the "Post." Nothing could be better, unless it
is your speech at the Williams dinner, which was better, and better than
any occasional speech you have given, me judice.

Great changes are projected in Sheffield,--you will have to come and see
them and us,--a widening of the village on the east, towards the meadow
and pine knoll, and--what do you think?--a railroad to the top of
Taghkonic! 'T is even so-proposed. An eastern company has bought the
Egremont Hotel, and the land along the foot of the mountain down as
far as Spurr's ( a mile), and they talk seriously of a railroad. So the
Taghkonic is to be made a watering-place, if the thing is feasible, in
quite another sense than that in which it has long sent its streams and
cast its lonely shadows upon our valley.

We are having winter at last, and our ice-houses filled with the best of
ice, and the prospect is fair for the wood-piles. The books you sent are
turning to great account with us. In that and in every way I am obliged
to you; and am, as ever,

Yours truly,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[312] To Mrs. David Lane.

ST. DAVID'S, Dec. 20, 1870.

DEAR FRIEND,--I think I must take you into council,--not to sit upon the
case, nor to get up a procession, nor to have the bells rung, if we
win; but just to sympathize, so far as mid-life vigor can, with an aged
couple, who have lived together half a century, and would much rather
live it over again than not to have lived it at all; who have lived in
that wonderful connection, which binds and blends two wills into one;
who do not say that no differences or difficulties have disturbed them,
an attainment beyond human reach,--but who have grown in the esteem and
love of each other to this day (at least one of them has); one of whom
finds his mate more beautiful than when he married her, though the
other's condition, in that respect, does n't admit of more or less,
being a condition of obstinate mediocrity; and who, both of them, look
with mingled wonder and gratitude to their approaching Gol