You are quite right in feeling assured that I should answer the letter
you have addressed to me. If you had entertained a presentiment that it
would afford me sincere pleasure and delight to hear from a warm-hearted
and admiring reader of my books in the backwoods of America, you would
not have been far wrong.
I thank you cordially and heartily both for your letter and its kind and
courteous terms. To think that I have awakened a fellow-feeling and
sympathy with the creatures of many thoughtful hours among the vast
solitudes in which you dwell, is a source of the purest delight and
pride to me; and believe me that your expressions of affectionate
remembrance and approval, sounding from the green forests on the banks
of the Mississippi, sink deeper into my heart and gratify it more than
all the honorary distinctions that all the courts in Europe could
confer.
It is such things as these that make one hope one does not live in vain,
and that are the highest reward of an author's life. To be numbered
among the household gods of one's distant countrymen, and associated
with their homes and quiet pleasures; to be told that in each nook and
corner of the world's great mass there lives one well-wisher who holds
communion with one in the spirit, is a worthy fame indeed, and one which
I would not barter for a mine of wealth.
That I may be happy enough to cheer some of your leisure hours for a
very long time to come, and to hold a place in your pleasant thoughts,
is the earnest wish of "Boz."
And, with all good wishes for yourself, and with a sincere reciprocation
of all your kindly feeling,
I am, dear Sir,
Faithfully yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. R. Monckton Milnes]