letter appeared in the _Athenaeum,_ for July 22, 1882
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I am here on a visit to my brother, who is a lawyer in this city,
and lives at Staten Island, at a distance of half an hour's sail.
The city has such immense natural advantages and such
capabilities of boundless growth, and such varied and ever
increasing accommodations and appliances for eye and ear, for
memory and wit, for locomotion and lavation, and all manner of
delectation, that I see that the poor fellows that live here do
get some compensation for the sale of their souls. And how they
multiply! They estimate the population today at 350,000, and
forty years ago, it is said, there were but 20,000. But I always
seem to suffer some loss of faith on entering cities. They are
great conspiracies; the parties are all maskers, who have taken
mutual oaths of silence not to betray each other's secret and
each to keep the other's madness in countenance. You can scarce
drive any craft here that does not seem a subornation of the
treason. I believe in the spade and an acre of good ground.
Whoso cuts a straight path to his own bread, by the help of God
in the sun and rain and sprouting of the grain, seems to me an
_universal_ workman. He solves the problem of life, not for one,
but for all men of sound body. I wish I may one day send you
word, or, better, show you the fact, that I live by my hands
without loss of memory or of hope. And yet I am of such a puny
constitution, as far as concerns bodily labor, that perhaps I
never shall. We will see.

Did I tell you that we hope shortly to send you some American
verses and prose of good intent? My vivacious friend Margaret
Fuller is to edit a journal whose first number she promises for
the 1st of July next, which I think will be written with a good
will if written at all. I saw some poetical fragments which
charmed me,--if only the writer consents to give them to
the public.

I believe I have yet little to tell you of myself. I ended in
the middle of February my ten lectures on the Present Age. They
are attended by four hundred and fifty to five hundred people,
and the young people are so attentive; and out of the hall ask
me so many questions, that I assume all the airs of Age and
Sapience. I am very happy in the sympathy and society of from
six to a dozen persons, who teach me to hope and expect
everything from my countrymen. We shall have many Richmonds in
the field presently. I turn my fa