"Still, sad 'odor' of humanity"
which clings to it from my predecessor. Mr. Hogan got home yesterday,
I believe. I saw him for the first time to-day. He was civil--they all
are civil. I have no fault to find except with taverns here and pretty
much everywhere.
Every six months a tavern should burn to the ground, with all its
traps, its "properties," its beds and pots and kettles, and start
afresh from its ashes like John Phoenix-Squibob.
No; give me home, or a home like mine, where all is clean and sweet,
where coffee has preëxisted in the berry, and tea has still faint
recollections of the pigtails that dangled about the plant from which
it was picked, where butter has not the prevailing character which
Pope assigned to Denham, where soup could look you in the face if it
had "eyes" (which it has not), and where the comely Anne or the
gracious Margaret takes the place of these napkin-bearing animals.
Enough! But I have been forlorn and ailing and fastidious--but I am
feeling a little better, and can talk about it. I had some ugly nights
tell you; but I am writing in good spirits, as you see. I have written
once before to Low, as I think I told you, and on the 25th mean to go
to a notary with Mr. Dawson, as he tells me it is the right thing to
do.
Yours always, O. W. H.
P. S. Made a pretty good dinner, after all; but better a hash at home
than a roast with strangers.
With much the same experience of asthma as a result, he visited
Princeton three or four years later, and wrote after his return:--