when he was busy, to run off and lie down for fear I should drop before his eyes.  My head was in such an agony I could not endure it another moment.  But I am well now.  I have wrestled and won, and now I think I shall not fail again.  Your most generous kindness of hospitality I heartily thank you for, but Mr. Hawthorne says he cannot leave home.  He wants rest, and he says when the wind is warm he shall feel well.  This cold wind ruins him.  I wish he were in Cuba or on some isle in the Gulf Stream.  But I must say I could not think him able to go anywhere, unless I could go with him.  He is too weak to take care of himself.  I do not like to have him go up and down stairs alone.  I have read to him all the afternoon and evening and after he walked in the morning to-day.  I do nothing but sit with him, ready to do or not to do, just as he wishes.  The wheels of my small menage are all stopped.  He is my world and all the business of it.  He has not smiled since he came home till to-day, and I made him laugh with Thackeray’s humor in reading to him; but a smile looks strange on a face that once shone like a thousand suns with smiles.  The light for the time has gone out of his eyes, entirely.  An infinite weariness films them quite.  I thank Heaven that summer and not winter approaches.”

[Footnote *:  As I write this paragraph, my friend, the Reverend James Freeman Clarke, puts into my hand the following note, which Hawthorne sent to him nearly thirty years ago:—­

    54 PINCKNEY STREET, Friday, July 8, 1842.

MY DEAR SIR,—­Though personally a stranger to you, I am about to request of you the greatest favor which I can receive from any man.  I am to be married to Miss Sophia Peabody; and it is our mutual desire that you should perform the ceremony.  Unless it should be decidedly a rainy day, a carriage will call for you at half past eleven o’clock in the forenoon.

Very respectfully yours,

       NATH.  HAWTHORNE.

Rev. JAMES F. CLARKE, Chestnut Street.]

On Friday evening of the same week Mrs. Hawthorne sent off another despatch to us:—­

“Mr. Hawthorne has been miserably ill for two or three days, so that I could not find a moment to speak to you.  I am most anxious to have him leave Concord again, and General Pierce’s plan is admirable, now that the General is well himself.  I think the serene jog-trot in a private carriage into country places, by trout-streams and to old farm-houses, away from care and news, will be very restorative.  The boy associations with the General will refresh him.  They will fish, and muse, and rest, and saunter upon horses’ feet, and be in the air all the time in fine weather.  I am quite content, though I wish I could go for a few petits sions.  But General Pierce has been a most tender, constant nurse for many years, and knows how to take care of the sick.  And his love for Mr. Hawthorne is the strongest passion of his soul, now his wife is departed.  They will go to the Isles of Shoals together probably, before their return.