Whether supercilious or respectful, they do not say anything that
can be heard. Of course, I have only myself to please, and my
work is slighted as soon as it has lost its first attraction. It
is to be hoped, if one should cross the sea, that the terror of
your English culture would scare the most desultory of Yankees
into precision and fidelity; and perhaps I am not yet too old to
be animated by what would have seemed to my youth a proud
privilege. If you shall fright me into labor and concentration,
I shall win my game; for I can well afford to pay any price to
get my work well done. For the rest, I hesitate, of course, to
rush rudely on persons that have been so long invisible angels to
me. No reasonable man but must hold these bounds in awe:--I--
much more,--who am of a solitary habit, from my childhood until
now.--I hear nothing again from Mr. Ireland. So I will let the
English Voyage hang as an afternoon rainbow in the East, and mind
my apples and pears for the present.
You are to know that in these days I lay out a patch of orchard
near my house, very much to the improvement, as all the household
affirm, of our homestead.
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