others, one of them from Bennoch. The English
critics seem to think me very bitter against their countrymen, and
it is, perhaps, natural that they should, because their self-conceit
can accept nothing short of indiscriminate adulation; but I really
think that Americans have more cause than they to complain of me.
Looking over the volume, I am rather surprised to find that whenever
I draw a comparison between the two people, I almost invariably cast
the balance against ourselves. It is not a good nor a weighty book,
nor does it deserve any great amount either of praise or censure. I
don't care about seeing any more notices of it."

Meantime the "Dolliver Romance," which had been laid aside on account of
the exciting scenes through which we were then passing, and which
unfitted him for the composition of a work of the imagination, made
little progress. In a note written to me at this time he says:--

"I can't tell you when to expect an instalment of the Romance, if
ever. There is something preternatural in my reluctance to begin. I
linger at the threshold, and have a perception of very disagreeable
phantasms to be encountered if I enter. I wish God had given me the
faculty of writing a sunshiny book."

I invited him to come to Boston and have a cheerful week among his old
friends, and threw in as an inducement a hint that he should hear the
great organ in the Music Hall. I also suggested that we could talk over
the new Romance together, if he would gladden us all by coming to the
city. Instead of coming, he sent this reply:--

"I thank you for your kind invitation to hear the grand instrument;
but it offers me no inducement additional to what I should always
have for a visit to your abode. I have no ear for an organ or a
jewsharp, nor for any instrument between the two; so you had better
invite a worthier guest, and I will come another time.

"I don't see much probability of my having the first chapter of the
Romance ready so soon as you want it. There are two or three
chapters ready to be written, but I am not yet robust enough to
begin, and I feel as if I should never carry it through.

"Besides, I want to prefix a little sketch of Thoreau to it,
because, from a tradition which he told me about this house of mine,
I got the idea of a deathless man, which is now taking a shape very
different from the original