STATEN ISLAND, July 7, 1843.
DEAR MOTHER,--I was very glad to get your letter and papers. Tell
Father that circumstantial letters make very substantial reading, at
any rate. I like to know even how the sun shines and garden grows
with you. I did not get my money in Boston, and probably shall not at
all. Tell Sophia that I have pressed some blossoms of the tulip tree
for her. They look somewhat like white lilies. The magnolia, too, is
in blossom here.
Pray, have you the seventeen-year locust in Concord? The air here is
filled with their din. They come out of the ground at first in an
imperfect state, and, crawling up the shrubs and plants, the perfect
insect bursts out through the back. They are doing great damage to the
fruit and forest trees. The latter are covered with dead twigs, which
in the distance look like the blossoms of the chestnut. They bore
every twig of last year's growth in order to deposit their eggs in it.
In a few weeks the eggs will be hatched, and the worms fall to the
ground and enter it, and in 1860 make their appearance again. I
conversed about their coming this season before they arrived. They do
no injury to the leaves, but, beside boring the twigs, suck their sap
for sustenance. Their din is heard by those who sail along the shore
from the distant woods,--Phar-r-r-aoh. Phar-r-r-aoh. They are
departing now. Dogs, cats, and chickens subsist mainly upon them in
some places.
I have not been to New York for more than three weeks. I have had an
interesting letter from Mr. Lane,[27] describing their new prospects.
My pupil and I are getting on apace. He is remarkably well advanced in
Latin, and is well advancing.
Your letter has just arrived. I was not aware that it was so long
since I wrote home; I only knew that I had sent five or six letters to
the town. It is very refreshing to hear from you, though it is not all
good news. But I trust that Stearns Wheeler is not dead. I should be
slow to believe it. He was made to work very well in this world. There
need be no tragedy in his death.
The demon which is said to haunt the Jones family, hovering over their
eyelids with wings steeped in juice of poppies, has commenced another
campaign against me. I am "clear Jones" in this respect at least. But
he finds little encouragement in my atmosphere, I assure you, for I do
not once fairly lose myself, except in those hours of truce allotted
to rest by immemorial custom. However, this skirmishing interferes
sadly with my literary projects, and I am apt to think it a good day's
work if I maintain a soldier's eye till nightfall. Very well, it does
not matter much in what wars we serve, whether in the Highlands or the
Lowlands. Everywhere we get soldiers' pay still.
Give my love to Aunt Louisa, whose benignant face I sometimes see
right in the wall, as naturally and necessarily shining on my path as
some star of unaccountably greater age and higher orbit than myself.
Let it be inquired by her of George Minott, as from me,--for she sees
him,--if he has seen any pigeons yet, and tell him there are plenty of
jack snipes here. As for William P., the "worthy young man,"--as I
live, my eyes have not fallen on him yet.
I have not had the influenza, though here are its
headquarters,--unless my first week's cold was it. Tell Helen I shall
write to her soon. I have heard Lucretia Mott. This is badly written;
but the worse the writing the sooner you get it this time from
Your affectionate son,
H. D. T.