His health, from that time, seemed to give way rapidly, and in the middle of May his friend, General Pierce, proposed that they should go among the New Hampshire hills together and meet the spring there.

The first letter we received from Mrs. Hawthorne[*] after her husband’s return to Concord in April gave us great anxiety.  It was dated “Monday eve,” and here are some extracts from it:—­

“I have just sent Mr. Hawthorne to bed, and so have a moment to speak to you.  Generally it has been late and I have not liked to disturb him by sitting up after him, and so I could not write since he returned, though I wished very much to tell you about him, ever since he came home.  He came back unlooked for that day; and when I heard a step on the piazza, I was lying on a couch and feeling quite indisposed.  But as soon as I saw him I was frightened out of all knowledge of myself,—­so haggard, so white, so deeply scored with pain and fatigue was the face, so much more ill he looked than I ever saw him before.  He had walked from the station because he saw no carriage there, and his brow was streaming with a perfect rain, so great had been the effort to walk so far....  He needed much to get home to me, where he could fling off all care of himself and give way to his feelings, pent up and kept back for so long, especially since his watch and ward of most excellent, kind Mr. Ticknor.  It relieved him somewhat to break down as he spoke of that scene....  But he was so weak and weary he could not sit up much, and lay on the couch nearly all the time in a kind of uneasy somnolency, not wishing to be read to even, not able to attend or fix his thoughts at all.  On Saturday he unfortunately took cold, and, after a most restless night, was seized early in the morning with a very bad stiff neck, which was acutely painful all Sunday.  Sunday night, however, a compress of linen wrung in cold water cured him, with belladonna.  But he slept also most of this morning....  He could as easily build London as go to the Shakespeare dinner.  It tires him so much to get entirely through his toilet in the morning, that he has to lie down a long time after it.  To-day he walked out on the grounds, and could not stay ten minutes, because I would not let him sit down in the wind, and he could not bear any longer exercise.  He has more than lost all he gained by the journey, by the sad event.  From being the nursed and cared for,—­early to bed and late to rise,—­led, as it were, by the ever-ready hand of kind Mr. Ticknor, to become the nurse and night-watcher with all the responsibilities, with his mighty power of sympathy and his vast apprehension of suffering in others, and to see death for the first time in a state so weak as his,—­the death also of so valued a friend,—­as Mr. Hawthorne says himself, ‘it told upon him’ fearfully.  There are lines ploughed on his brow which never were there before....  I have been up and alert ever since his return, but one day I was obliged,