am essentially worse, but essentially better, on the contrary, only that the feeling of discomfort and trouble at the heart (physically) will come with the fall of the thermometer, and the voice will go! . . .
And then I have another question to enunciate -- will the oracle answer?
Do you know who wrote the article in the 'Metropolitan'? Beseech you, answer me. I have a suspicion, true, that the critics have been supernaturally kind to me, but the kindness of this 'Metropolitan' critic so passes the ordinary limit of kindness, metropolitan or critical, that I cannot but look among my personal friends for the writer of the article. Coming to personal friends, I reject one on one ground and one on another -- for one the graciousness is too graceful, and for another the grace almost too gracious. I am puzzled and dizzy with doubt; and -- is it you? Answer me, will you? If so, I should owe so much gratitude to you. Suffer me to pay it! -- permit the pleasure to me of paying it! -- for I know too much of the pleasures of gratitude to be willing to lose one of them.
March 6, [1845].
Thank you, dearest Mr. Kenyon -- they are very fine. The poetry is in them, rather than in Blair. And now I send them back, and Cunningham and Jerrold, with thanks on thanks; and if you will be kind enough not to insist on my reading the letters to Travis1 within the 'hour,' they shall wait for the 'Responsibility,' and the two go to you together.
And as to the tiring, it has not been much, and the happy day was well worth being tired for. It is better to be tired with pleasure than with frost; and if I have the
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