Here I am, Thursday morning, on a second sheet, waiting for the grapes. What else, in the mean time, shall I entertain you with? The flood! It has been prodigious, the highest known for many years; water, water all around, from beside the road here to the opposite hill. It is curious to see men running like rats from the deluge, up to their knees in water, on returning from a common walk (fact, happened to the S—s), trying to drive home one way and could n't,—going round to a bridge and finding that swept away,—dams torn down and mills toppled over, and half the "sure and firm-set earth" turned into water-courses and flood-trash. . . .
[310] The afternoon train has arrived, and no grapes. Very angry.
The faithless express, you see, is a great plague to you as well as me; for not only does it not bring me the grapes, but is the cause of your having this long dawdling letter. Why don't you show up its iniquities? What is a "Post" made and set up for, if not, among other things, to bear affiches testifying to the people of their wickedness? The express is the most slovenly agent and the most irresponsible tyrant in the country. What it brings is perhaps ruined by delay,—plants, for instance. No help. "Pay," it says to the station-master, "or we don't leave it." Oh, if I had the gift and grace to send articles to the "Post," from time to time, upon abuses!
Friday. No grapes. More angry.
Saturday. No grapes. I 'm furious.
This last was the record of the afternoon; but in the evening, at half-past nine, they were sent down from the station,—and in remarkably good order, considering, and in quantity quite astonishing. The basket seemed like the conjurer's hat, out of which comes a half-bushel of flowers, oranges; and what not. We are all very much obliged to you; and, judging from the appearance of the six heaped-up plates, I am sure, when we come to eat them, that every tooth will testify, if it does not speak.
To the Same.
ST. DAVID'S, Feb. 28, 1870.
MY DEAR BRYANT,—The volume has not come, but the kindness 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.