I PRAY you to admire my style of writing February. Began to write July, but the truth is, I nearly lost my wits on my journey. Twelve or thirteen mortal hours in getting to Hartford [FN: Fifty miles]. After two or three hours, called [165] up, just when the sleep had become so profound that on being waked I could not, for some seconds, settle it on what hemisphere, continent, country, or spot of the creation I was, nor why I was there at all. Then whisked away in the dark to the science-lighted domes of New Haven, but did n't see them—for why? I was asleep as I went through to the wharf. From the wharf, pitched into the steamboat, not having the points of compass, nor the time of day, nor the zenith and nadir of my own person. After two previous months of quiet, the whirl-about made me feel very "like an ocean weed uptorn And loose along the world of waters borne." If not a foundered weed, a very dumfoundered one at least.
To Rev. William Ware.
SHEFFIELD, Feb. 15, 1841.
How glad I am you wrote to me, my dear W. Is n't that a queer beginning? But there are people who say that everything natural is beautiful, and I am sure that first line was as natural as the gushing out of a fountain; for the very sight of your handwriting was as a sunbeam in a winter's day. By the bye, speaking of sunbeams, they certainly do wonders in winter weather. Have you ever seen such blue depths, or depths of blue, in the mountains, that it seemed as if the very azure of the sky had fallen and lodged in their clefts and leafless trees? Yesterday I was looking towards our barn roofs covered with snow,—and you know they are but six rods off,—and so deep was the color that I thought for the moment it was the blue of the distant horizon. [166] Our friend Catherine Sedgwick, writing to me a day or two ago, speaks in raptures of it. She says it is like the haze over Soracte or Capri.
So you see my paragraph has led me from winter to summer. Summer is gone to New York a week since. No doubt it will produce beautiful flowers in due time, many of them culled from far distant lands, but most of them native, I ween. Foreign seeds, you know, can do nothing without a good soil. In truth, I am looking with great interest for Catherine Sedgwick's book.
"Hard work to write." Yes, terribly hard it has been for me these two years past; but when I am vigorous, I like it. However, the pen is ever, doubtless, a manacle to the thought; draws it out, if you please, but makes a dragging business of it. By the bye, is your laziness making an apology for not finishing "Scenes in Judea "? Hear a compliment of my mother's for your encouragement. "I should think the man that could write the Letters from Palmyra,'—anything so beautiful and so powerful too" (her very words),—"could write anything."
I am delighted to hear of Mr. Farrar's being better. Give my love to them, and tell him I know of nothing in the world I could near with more pleasure than of his improvement. What a beautiful, gentle, precious spirit he is!
Yes, I grant you all about Cambridge; and if I don't go abroad, perhaps we will come and live with you a year or two. Something I must do; I get no better.
I can't guess your plaguy charade. I never thought of one a minute before, and I have ruminated upon yours an hour. [167] Oh that you were my colleague, or I yours, as you please!
With our love to your wife and children,