LETTERS TO MRS. LESLIE STEPHEN, R. W. GILDER, JOSIAH QUINCY, THE MISSES LAWRENCE, W. D. HOWELLS, THOMAS HUGHES, S. WEIR MITCHELL, MRS. W. K. CLIFFORD, LESLIE STEPHEN, E. L. GODKIN, MISS KATE FIELD, C. E. NORTON, MISS E. G. NORTON, EDWARD E. HALE, MRS. F. G. SHAW, E. R. HOAR, MRS. BURNETT.

TO MRS. LESLIE STEPHEN

Elmwood, Nov. 9, 1889.

It is a very strange feeling this of renewing my life here. I feel somehow as if Charon had ferried me the wrong way, and yet it is into a world of ghosts that he has brought me, and I am slowly making myself at home among them. It is raining faintly today, with a soft southerly wind which will prevail with the few leaves left on my trees to let go their hold and join their fellows on the ground. I have forbidden them to be raked away, for the rustle of them stirs my earliest memories, and when the wind blows they pirouette so gayly as to give me cheerful thoughts of death. But oh, the changes! I hardly know the old road (a street now) that I have paced so many years,

for the new houses. My old homestead seems to have a puzzled look in its eyes as it looks down (a trifle. superciliously methinks) on these upstarts. "He who lives longest has the most old clothes," says the Zulu proverb, and I shall wear mine till I die.

It is odd to think that the little feet which make the old staircases and passages querulous at their broken slumbers are the second generation since my own. I try to believe it, but find it hard. I feel so anomalously young I can't persuade myself that I ever made such a rumpus, though perhaps the boots are thicker now.

The two old English elms in front of the house haven't changed. The sturdy islanders! A trifle thicker in the waist, perhaps, as is the wont of prosperous elders, but looking just as I first saw them seventy years ago, and it is a balm to my eyes. I am by no means sure that it is wise to love the accustomed and familiar so much as I do, but it is pleasant and gives a unity to life which trying can't accomplish.

You

I began this yesterday and now it is Sunday. will have not gone to church five hours ago. I have just performed the chief function of a householder by winding up all the clocks and adjusting them to a striking unanimity. I doubt if this be judicious, for when I am lying awake at night their little differences of opinion amuse me. They persuade me how artificial a contrivance Time is. We have Eternity given us in the lump, can't believe in such luck, and cut it up into mouthfuls as if it wouldn't go round among so many. Are we to be seduced by the superstitious observances of the earth and sun into a belief in days and years?...

TO JOSIAH QUINCY

Elmwood, Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 10, 1889.

Dear Mr. Quincy,-I regret very much that I cannot have the pleasure of joining with you in paying respect to a man so worthy of it as Mr. Cleveland.*

Let who has felt compute the strain
Of struggle with abuses strong,
The doubtful course, the helpless pain
Of seeing best intents go wrong.

We, who look on with critic eyes,
Exempt from action's crucial test,
Human ourselves, at least are wise
In honoring one who did his best.
Faithfully yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

...

TO R. W. GILDER

Elmwood, Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 22, 1889.

I should have been glad to preside at the breakfast of the Copyright League, but I really couldn't. Such things worry me nowadays more than you could easily conceive. They take more life out of me than I can afford to give. Kept in this shelter, my candle seems to have some stuff left and shortens at a hope. fully moderate rate; but set it in a flurry of air and the deuce is in it, it so swales and runs to waste.

* At the banquet of the Boston Merchants' Association, where ex-President Cleveland was the chief guest, on December 12th.

TO THE MISSES LAWRENCE

Elmwood, Cambridge, Mass., Jan. 2, 1890.

. Here I am again in the house where I was born longer ago than you can remember, though I wish you more New Year's days than I have had. 'Tis a pleas ant old house just about twice as old as I am, four miles from Boston, in what was once the country and is now a populous suburb. But it still has some ten acres of open about it, and some fine old trees. When the worst comes to the worst (if I live so long) I shall still have four and a half acres left with the house, the rest belonging to my brothers and sisters or their heirs. It is a square house with four rooms on a floor, like some houses of the Georgian era I have seen in English provincial towns, only they are of brick and this is of wood. But it is solid with its heavy oaken beams, the spaces between which in the four outer walls are filled in with brick, though you mustn't fancy a brick-and-timber house, for outwardly it is sheathed with wood. Inside there is much wainscot (of deal) painted white in the fashion of the time when it was built. It is very sunny, the sun rising so as to shine (at an acute angle, to be sure) through the northern windows, and going round the other three sides in the course of the day. There is a pretty staircase with the quaint old twisted banisters-which they call balusters now, but mine are banisters. My library occupies two rooms opening into each other by arches at the sides of the ample chimneys. The trees I look out on are the earliest things I remember. There you have me in my new-old quar

ters. But you must not fancy a large house

sixteen feet square and, on the ground floor, nine high. It was large, as things went here, when it was built, and has a certain air of amplitude about it as from some inward sense of dignity.

Now for out of doors. What do you suppose the thermometer is about on this second day of January? I was going to say he was standing on his head-at any rate he has forgotten what he's about, and is marking sixty-three degrees Fahrenheit on the north side. of the house and in the shade! Where is that sense of propriety that once belonged to the seasons? This is flat communism, January insisting on going halves with May. News I have none, nor other resources, as you see, save those of the special correspondent, who takes to description when events fail. Yes, I have one event. I dine to-night with Mr. R. C. Winthrop, who remembers your father very well nearly sixty years ago.

I have all my grandchildren with me, five of them, and the eldest boy is already conspiring with a beard! It is awful, this stealthy advance of Time's insupportable foot. There are two ponies for the children and two dogs, bull-terriers, and most amiable creatures. This is my establishment, and four of the weans have had the grippe. I remember it here in '31, I think it

was.

You see I make all I can of age's one privilege --that of having a drearier memory than other folks.

I forgot one thing. There are plenty of mice in the walls, and, now that I can't go to the play with you, I assist at their little tragedies and comedies behind the