[167]
Letters.
To Dr. Francis Lieber, Philadelphia.
Boston, April 7, 1835.my dear Dr. Lieber,—I have received so much pleasure from two of your late productions, that I cannot forbear letting you know it. Dr. Beck was kind enough to lend me your paper, read before the Pennsylvania Prison Society, properly vindicating our country against the bad logic of English politicians. You always seem to be ready in the harness,—as the nursery phrase has it, ‘All saddled, all bridled, all fit for the fight.’ I rejoice that our country has found a son—by adoption or birth is immaterial—so prompt to volunteer in her cause. I think your argument completely successful. Your volume, entitled ‘The Stranger in America,’ I finished yesterday, having read it with deep interest. I followed you anxiously over every inch of the fields of Ligny, Waterloo, and Namur, and through all the perils that ensued, from hospital to hospital, till the joyous close of this cycle of misfortunes in the love of your fair nurse. Oh, human nature! war did not choke the delicate sensibilities which glow in either sex, or alter the nature of man, which indeed is indestructible. I think the Peace Society could do nothing better than to reprint your chapter on Waterloo as a tract, or at least as an article in one of their journals. It gives the most vivid sketch I ever read of the horrors of war, because it embodies them in the experience of one individual, without resorting to any of the declamatory generalities which are generally used with that view. Most truly your friend,
To Charlemagne Tower, New York.1
Boston, June 28, 1835.my dear Tower,—. . . I was truly gratified by the morsel of praise from Anthon;2 to have one's writing remembered a year is no small gratification, especially if that is the only reward. My labors in the ‘Jurist’ are pressing and heavy, and lack the exciting stimulus of pecuniary profit. Indeed, I fear that exertions like mine will meet with very slight return in the way of this world's gear. If you or any of your friends or the gentlemen of the bar in New York will contribute to the ‘Jurist,’ the assistance will be appreciated. Mr. Anthon has written for it. In the last number, you will see my name announced as enlisted in two projects of some consequence.3
