[185] To the Same.
NEW YORK, July 10, 1846.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--If from this awful heat (90 degrees in my study)
where I am busy, I were not going to an equally awful country heat
where I shall be lazy, I would put off writing a few days. . . . My
principal--no, I won't say that--my most painful business is hunting
up sermons fit to be preached. The game grows scarce, and my greatest
vexation is that every now and then, when I think I have got a fox or a
beaver, it turns out to be a woodchuck or a muskrat.
From the tenor of some of our late letters, I believe we should be
thought to belong to the "Mutual Admiration Society." I deny that of
us both, though appearances are rather against us. I will have done,
at any rate, for your last has quite knocked me down, or rather so
outrageously set me up, as I was never before.
With regard to my plans, I myself prefer four months in the pulpit
here, and that was what I proposed; but something had been said by me,
about three months in a different connection, and the congregation, I
am told, thought that in naming three they were conforming precisely
to my wishes. But that will be arranged satisfactorily. I am to go
out of town, of course; I cannot live here upon a quarter or third
of a salary. I have something of my own, this house and a little
more,--twelve thousand dollars, perhaps, in all; so far I have carried
out the plan you speak of. I have had reasons more than most others
for attending to the means, for I am the only surviving male member of
my family. I have had the satisfaction of doing something for them all
along, and shall have that of leaving to my mother [186] and sisters a
house to cover them, and forty acres of land. . . .
Yours as ever, only more than ever,