n
plot. When the work is completed in the magazine, I can fill up the
gaps and make straight the crookednesses, and christen it with a
fresh title. In this untried experiment of a serial work I desire
not to pledge myself, or promise the public more than I may
confidently expect to achieve. As regards the sketch of Thoreau, I
am not ready to write it yet, but will mix him up with the life of
The Wayside, and produce an autobiographical preface for the
finished Romance. If the public like that sort of stuff, I too find
it pleasant and easy writing, and can supply a new chapter of it for
every new volume, and that, moreover, without infringing upon my
proper privacy. An old Quaker wrote me, the other day, that he had
been reading my Introduction to the 'Mosses' and the 'Scarlet
Letter,' and felt as if he knew me better than his best friend; but
I think he considerably overestimates the extent of his intimacy
with me.

"I received several private letters and printed notices of 'Our Old
Home' from England. It is laughable to see the innocent wonder with
which they regard my criticisms, accounting for them by jaundice,
insanity, jealousy, hatred, on my part, and never admitting the
least suspicion that there may be a particle of truth in them. The
monstrosity of their self-conceit is such that anything short of
unlimited admiration impresses them as malicious caricature. But
they do me great injustice in supposing that I hate them. I would as
soon hate my own people.

"Tell Ticknor that I want a hundred dollars more, and I suppose I
shall keep on wanting more and more till the end of my days. If I
subside into the almshouse before my intellectual faculties are
quite extinguished, it strikes me that I would make a very pretty
book out of it; and, seriously, if I alone were concerned, I should
not have any great objection to winding up there."

On the 14th of November came a pleasant little note from him, which
seemed to have been written in better spirits than he had shown of
late. Photographs of himself always amused him greatly, and in the
little note I refer to there is this pleasant passage:--

"Here is the photograph,--a grandfatherly old figure enough; and I
suppose that is the reason why you select it.

"I am much in want of _cartes de visite_ to distribute on my own
account, and