ciety, and must profess myself entirely unacquainted with the order
of proceedings on that occasion. Of the general character of the
performances I know only so much as might be gathered from reading
a few of them which have occasionally fallen in my way. As you
have kindly offered to give me any information I may desire on these
subjects, I shall be obliged to you if you will mark out for me such a
brief general outline as may prevent me from doing anything outré or
getting foul of an interdicted subject."

Mr. Spooner responded in several pages, instructing him
as to the sort of address expected of him, the probable com-
position of the audience, the time, place, and manner of de-
livery, and hinting also at the success or non-success of former
poets. Mr. Willard Phillips wrote him a long epistle of ad-
monition, particularly urging him to pay attention to his elo-
cution. In Mr. Phillips's opinion nearly everything depended
upon that ; and he thought that an indifferent poem, if it could
be spoken in a fine manner, would achieve an undoubted suc-
cess.

During the summer the leisure left him by his professional
work was devoted to the preparation of this poem, which he
found more of a labor than he had anticipated. " The compo-
sition of my address," he wrote to a friend, " owing partly to
my having written but little, and partly to the difficulty of
the stanza I have selected (the Spenserian), has come near to
making me sick." Nevertheless, it was finished, and in Au-
gust he went to Boston to fulfil his engagement. It was his
first visit, of which we have any account, to a much-longed‐
for city, and it would be pleasing to learn his impressions of it
and its people. But the following letter, addressed to his
wife, August 25th, is the only one preserved out of his corre-
spondence of the time, and I give it at length as characteristic:

" MY DEAR FRANCES : You observed in what an elegant style I
went from Great Barrington to Sheffield. Seated on a rough board
laid on the top of a crazy wagon, whose loose sides kept swinging
from right to left, with a colored fellow at my right hand and a

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