far as I had to do with it.  Truly your account of matters threw a glow of life into my thoughts which is very rare there now; altogether a gratifying little Transaction to me,—­and I must add a surprising, for the enthusiasm of good-will is evidently great, and the occasion is almost infinitesimally small!  Well, well; it is all finished off and completed,—­(you can tell Mr. Eliot, with many thanks from me, that I did introduce the proper style, “President and Fellows,” &c., and have forgotten nothing of what he said, or of what he did);—­and so we will say only, Faustum sit, as our last word on the subject;—­and to me it will be, for some days yet, under these vernal skies, something that is itself connected with THE SPRING in a still higher sense; a little white and red-lipped bit of Daisy pure and poor, scattered into TIME’s Seedfield, and struggling above ground there, uttering its bit of prophecy withal, among the ox-hoofs and big jungles that are everywhere about and not prophetic of much!—­

One thing only I regret, that you have spoken of the affair!  For God’s sake don’t; and those kindly people to whom you have,- -swear them to silence for love of me!  The poor little Daisykin will get into the Newspapers, and become the nastiest of Cabbages:—­silence, silence, I beg of you to the utmost stretch of your power!  Or is the case already irremediable?  I will hope not.  Talk about such things, especially Penny Editor’s talk, is like vile coal-smoke filling your poor little world; silence alone is azure, and has a sky to it.—­But, enough now.

The “little Book” never came; and, I doubt, never will:  it is a fate that seems to await three fourths of the Books that attempt to reach me by the American Post; owing to some informality in wrapping (I have heard);—­it never gave me any notable regret till now.  However, I had already bought myself an English copy, rather gaudy little volume (probably intended for the railways, as if it were a Book to be read there), but perfectly printed, ready to be read anywhere by the open eye and earnest mind;—­ which I read here, accordingly, with great attention, clear assent for most part, and admiring recognition.  It seems to me you are all your old self here, and something more. A calm insight, piercing to the very centre; a beautiful sympathy, a beautiful epic humor; a soul peaceably irrefragable in this loud-jangling world, of which it sees the ugliness, but notices only the huge new opulences (still so anarchic); knows the electric telegraph, with all its vulgar botherations and impertinences, accurately for what it is, and ditto ditto the oldest eternal Theologies of men.  All this belongs to the Highest Class of thought (you may depend upon it); and again seemed to me as, in several respects, the one perfectly Human Voice I had heard among my fellow-creatures for a long time.  And then the