I don't know how it is I am able to take so little interest in reading this winter. I marked out a number of books when I first came here, to finish. What with their heaviness and the damnable slowness with which the Dutch still goes, they weigh on me like a haystack. I loathe the thought of them; and yet they have poisoned my slave of a conscience so that I can't enjoy anything else. I have reached an age when practical work of some kind clamors to be done—and I must still wait!
There! Having worked off that pent-up gall of six weeks' accumulation I feel more genial. I wish I could have some news of you—now that the postage is lowered to such a ridiculous figure (and no letter is double) there remains no shadow of an excuse for not writing—but, still, I don't expect anything from you. I suppose you are sinking ever deeper into the sloughs of the law—yet I ween the Eternal Mystery still from time to time gives her goad another turn in the raw she once established between your ribs. Don't let it heal over yet. When I get home let's establish a philosophical society to have regular meetings and discuss none but the very tallest and broadest questions—to be composed of none but the very topmost cream of Boston manhood. It will give each one a chance to air his own opinion in a grammatical form, and to sneer and chuckle when he goes home at what damned fools all the other members are—and may grow into something very important after a sufficient number of years.
The German character is without mountains or valleys; its favorite food is roast veal; and in other lines it prefers whatever may be the analogue thereof—all which gives life here a certain flatness to the high-tuned American taste. I don't think any one need care much about coming here unless he wants to dig very deeply into some exclusive specialty. I have been reading nothing of any interest but some chapters of physiology. There has a good deal been doing here of late on the physiology of the senses, overlapping perception, and consequently, in a measure, the psychological field. I am wading my way towards it, and if in course of time I strike on anything exhilarating, I'll let you know.
I'll now pull up. I don't know whether you take it as a compliment that I should only write to you when in the dismalest of dumps—perhaps you ought to—you, the one emergent peak, to which I cling when all the rest of the world has sunk beneath the wave. Believe me, my Wendly boy, what poor possibility of friendship abides in the crazy frame of W. J. meanders about thy neighborhood. Good-bye! Keep the same bold front as ever to the Common Enemy—and don't forget your ally,
W. J.
That is, after all, all I wanted to write you and it may float the rest of the letter. Pray give my warm regards to your father, mother and sister; and my love to the honest Gray and to Jim Higginson.
[Written on the outside of the envelope.]
Jan. 4. By a strange coincidence, after writing this last night, I received yours this morning. Not to sacrifice the postage-stamps which are already on the envelope (Economical W!) I don't reopen it. But I will write you again soon. Meanwhile, bless your heart! thank you! Vide Shakespeare: sonnet XXLX.
To Thomas W. Ward.
BERLIN, Jan. —, 1868.