Boston, Tuesday, 31st.
I have safely arrived here, just in time to add a line to that effect, and get this off by to-morrow's English mail from New York. Catarrh rather better. Everything triumphant last night, except no sleep again. I suppose Dolby to be now on his way back to join me here. I am much mistaken if the political crisis do not damage the farewells by almost one half.
I hope that I am certainly better altogether.
My room well decorated with flowers, of course, and Mr. and Mrs. Fields coming to dinner. They are the most devoted of friends, and never in the way and never out of it.
Miss Hogarth.
Boston, Wednesday, April 1st, 1868.
I received your letter of from the 14th to the 17th of March, here, last night. My New York doctor has prescribed for me promptly, and I hope I am better. I am certainly no worse. We shall do (to the best of my belief) very well with the farewells here and at New York, but not greatly. Everything is at a standstill, pending the impeachment and the next presidential election. I forgot whether I told you that the New York press are going to give me a public dinner, on Saturday, the 18th.
I hear (but not from himself) that Wills has had a bad fall in hunting, and is, or has been, laid up. I am supposed, I take it, not to know this until I hear it from himself.
Thursday.
My notion of the farewells is pretty certain now to turn out right. It is not at all probable that we shall do anything enormous. Every pulpit in Massachusetts will resound to violent politics to-day and to-night. You remember the Hutchinson family?[24] I have had a grateful letter from John Hutchinson. He speaks of "my sister Abby" as living in New York. The immediate object of his note is to invite me to the marriage of his daughter, twenty-one years of age.