[192]
sixteen to nineteen, who belong to my family, to understand and love Milton, and it is a great pleasure to find how they take to it.
Yours always,
G. T.
To Charles S. Daveis, Portland.
Boston, December 31, 1839.
my dear Charles,—. . . . The world goes on here, inside and outside my domicile, much after its old rate.
The money market is easier, business men less anxious, and the prospect of getting into new scrapes and embarrassments, from Eastern or Western lands, up-town lots, or other absurdities, very promising.
The opinion here is that money will be a drug in April, and the consequence of that, I suppose, is inevitable.
Old Mr. Lyman used to say he never knew anybody learn anything by experience; and the Yankees, nowadays, seem to justify his wisdom, or sarcasm.
Whereupon, I hold it judicious to sell out all bank, insurance, and other stocks, whether fancy or not, and live on mortgages and such small deer, till the succession of gales now blowing, and of political parties now fighting, are pretty much gone by, and things are settled down into some sort of peace and order; for, considering how much we are under the fluctuations of foreign affairs as well as domestic follies, and, taking Louis Philippe, the Chartists, the Northeastern Boundary, and the Southwestern bankruptcy, all into the computation, a close reef is better than a flowing sheet.
‘Ye have what I advise,’ as Beelzebub said, braggingly, after he had counselled ‘ignoble ease and peaceful sloth,’—a parallel to my case, if you like so to call it.
. . . . We are all well; my wife famously, and the bairns thrivingly.
Whiggery is low. I never thought much of it, and now less than ever, since the Whigs have chosen a nullifier and a sub-treasury man for Speaker.1 . . . . But we shall get settled some time or other, and so will you in Maine.
When will you get your land on the Madawaska, and when will you get pay for your frolic last winter?
However, laissez-aller. It is a new year.
Love to all.
Yours always, G. T.
To Charles S. Daveis, Portland.
Boston, May 12, 1840.
Guizot's essay on the character of Washington is admirable, and Hillard has done justice to it in the translation.
As soon as it is out 