LITERARY WELL-WISHERS—GEORGE D. PRENTICE—MRS.
SIGOURNEY—GRACE GREENWOOD—H. W. LONGFELLOW—JAMES
REDPATH—“THE WANDERING JEW”
AUTHORS were not so plentiful then as to attract no attention in a
crowd of non-literary people. Men and women who had climbed the heights
had leisure to glance down at those nearer the foot of the hill,
and to send back a cheering hail. I had twenty letters from George
D. Prentice, known of all men as the friend and helper of youthful
writers. All were kind and encouraging. By-and-by, they were fatherly
and familiar. As when I lamented that I had never been able to make my
head work without my heart, he responded, “Hearts without heads are
too impulsive, sometimes too hot. Heads without hearts are too cold.
Suppose you settle the matter by giving the heart into my keeping, in
trust for the happy man who will call for it some day?”
His letters during the war were tinged with sadness. In one he wrote:
“My whole heart is one throbbing prayer to the God of Nations that He
will have mercy upon my beloved country.”
In reply to a letter of sympathy after the death of a gallant young
son, who fell on the battle-field, he said:
“My dear boy never gave me a pang except by entering the
army (in obedience to what he felt was the call of duty),
and in dying. A nobler, more dutiful son never gladdened a
father’s heart.”
Our correspondence was continued as long as the poet-editor lived. I
owe him much. I wish I had made him comprehend how much.
Mrs. Sigourney, then on “the retired list” of American authors, sent me
a copy of her latest volume of poems—_A Western Home_—and three or four
letters of motherly counsel, one of which advised me to take certain
epochs of American history as foundation-stones for any novels I might
write in future, and bidding me “God-speed!”
Grace Greenwood opened a correspondence with the younger woman who had
admired her afar off, and we kept up the friendship until she went
abroad to live, resuming our intercourse upon her return to New York in
the early eighties.
From Mr. Longfellow I had two letters. One told me that Mrs. Longfellow
was “reading _Alone_ in her turn.”
“I am pleased to note upon the title-page of my copy,
‘_Sixth Edition_.’ That looks very like a guide-board
pointing to Fame. I should think you would feel as does the
traveller in the Tyrol who sees, at a turn in the rocky
pass, a finger-post with the inscription—‘TO ROME.’ Hoping
that you will not be molested by the bandits who sometimes
infest that route, I am sincerely yours,