The photograph came safely, to my thorough content. I have what
I have wished. This head is to me out of comparison more
satisfying than any picture. I confirm my recollections and I
make new observations; it is life to life. Thanks to the Sun.
This artist remembers what every other forgets to report, and
what I wish to know, the true sculpture of the features, the
angles, the special organism, the rooting of the hair, the form
and the placing of the head. I am accustomed to expect of the
English a securing of the essentials in their work, and the sun
does that, and you have done it in this portrait, which gives me
much to think and feel.* I was instantly stirred to an emulation
of your love and punctuality, and, last Monday, which was my
forty-third birthday, I went to a new Daguerreotypist, who took
much pains to make his picture right. I brought home three
shadows not agreeable to my own eyes. The machine has a bad
effect on me. My wife protests against the imprints as
slanderous. My friends say they look ten years older, and, as I
think, with the air of a decayed gentleman touched with his first
paralysis.
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