Then I will depart
in peace, as I came.
At Mr. Ireland's "Institutes," I will read lectures; and
possibly in London too, if, when there, you looking with your
clear eyes shall say that it is desired by persons who ought to
be gratified. But I wish such lecturing to be a mere
contingency, and nowise a settled purpose. I had rather stay at
home, and forego the happiness of seeing you, and the excitement
of England, than to have the smallest pains taken to collect an
audience for me. So now we will leave this egg in the desert for
the ostrich Time to hatch it or not.
It seems you are not tired of pale Americans, or will not own it.
You have sent our Country-Senator* where he wanted to go, and to
the best hospitalities as we learn today directly from him. I
cannot avoid sending you another of a different stamp. Henry
Hedge is a recluse but Catholic scholar in our remote Bangor, who
reads German and smokes in his solitary study through nearly
eight months of snow in the year, and deals out, every Sunday,
his witty apothegms to the lumber-merchants and township-owners
of Penobscot River, who have actually grown intelligent
interpreters of his riddles by long hearkening after them.
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