" Then I have publish'd two prose
works, "Specimen Days," and a late one, "November Boughs." (A little
volume, "Good-Bye my Fancy," is soon to be out, wh' will finish the
matter.) I do not propose here to enter the much-fought field of the
literary criticism of any of those works.
But for a few portraiture or descriptive bits. To-day in the upper
story of a little wooden house of two stories near the Delaware river,
east shore, sixty miles up from the sea, is a rather large 20-by-20
low ceiling'd room something like a big old ship's cabin. The floor,
three quarters of it with an ingrain carpet, is half cover'd by a deep
litter of books, papers, magazines, thrown-down letters and circulars,
rejected manuscripts, memoranda, bits of light or strong twine, a
bundle to be "express'd," and two or three venerable scrap books. In
the room stand two large tables (one of ancient St. Domingo mahogany
with immense leaves) cover'd by a jumble of more papers, a varied and
copious array of writing materials, several glass and china vessels
or jars, some with cologne-water, others with real honey, granulated
sugar, a large bunch of beautiful fresh yellow chrysanthemums,
some letters and envelopt papers ready for the post office, many
photographs, and a hundred indescribable things besides. There are all
around many books, some quite handsome editions, some half cover'd by
dust, some within reach, evidently used, (good-sized print, no type
less than long primer,) some maps, the Bible, (the strong cheap
edition of the English crown,) Homer, Shakspere, Walter Scott,
Emerson, Ticknor's "Spanish Literature," John Carlyle's Dante,
Felton's "Greece," George Sand's "Consuelo," avery choice little
Epictetus, some novels, the latest foreign and American monthlies,
quarterlies, and so on.
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