☞PS.—Don’t skip any of this letter, now—because it is just full of wisdom.

Well, Shipmate, Avast! (whatever that may mean—but it is a good sea-going word, anyhow)—I am sick in bed. I have had a long siege of it, now, & am getting very, very much opposed to it. I did a vast quantity of work during the first few days & nights after I arrived here; then I heard that a blundering adventurer whom nobody knows had quietly ingratiated himself with the officials here & was about to get the San Francisco Postmastership, a place that one of my best old friends has long been a candidate for. I started out at 7 in the evening, in a & by min midnight ⒶemendationI had seen every Senator of the Pacific delegation, & had had such a time bullying & badgering & persuading them—but I gained my point—they pledged themselves to kill the nomination if it ever got into the Senate. But I did not want it to get even that far. I arranged to go with a friend to see the President early in the morning & see if he would not take some more time before appointing this man—& then I came home & went to bed & have been there ever since. But the nomination is n has not gone to the Senate & is not going. My good friend argued the case well with his Royal Highness, & I might have spoiled it. That was a most excellent night’s work—& the excitement of it was fine. I think those people never knew before that I had any energy in me. They were really complimentary. They said the I should have the nomination & the confirmation too, beyond any question, if I would say the word.1explanatory note Ah, but wouldn’t I throw dignity into that position?—and wouldn’t I wield its vast political power with a royal spirit?—& moreover wouldn’t I send all my friends’ letters through the mails free of postage?—aye, & their baggage too, for that matter?.—Ⓐemendation—& finally wouldn’t I tyrannize over all the newspapers, from Utah & Montana, to Japan & China; & from Alaska to the Isthmus, if they didn’t speak respectfully of me? I would soon let the public know what it is to have a cruel despot over them. I shall certainly have to be Postmaster under the new dispensation that comes into power a year hence. But I shall always guard against another burst of energy; it m Ⓐemendationhas made me sick once—it might destroy me next time.

I think you were ever so kind to write me a long letter when you were so busy. Very few young ladies would take so much trouble to do me a kindness, I can tell you. And so I am cheerfully willing to bear them the bitterest malice on account of it. Dinner, gymnasium, French, German, music, letter-writing, practicing—it makes my head ache to think of it. It is well that by nature you move quickly—as if you were hung on watch-springs, as it were. for otherwise I am afraid that some of those duties would have to go by default.

Ah—Harrison, is it?—Miss Harrison. Now you must pardon me, but really I haven’t a bit of won’t acknowledge full confidence in Miss Harrison’s critical judgment. “And now he feels the nicest distinctions of beauty, etc.” To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself. Now, I don’t honestly think H. can do that.2explanatory note Why, I could take sentences from your letters that would rather sir surprise Ⓐemendationthat young woman. You know very well that I am particularly fond of a happy expression, & that I never tired of reading that Howajji in Syria, simply because it could furnish that charm in such profusion.3explanatory note Anybody can have ideas—the difficulty is to express them. Ⓐemendationwithout squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph. I charge you to believe that I am not trying to flatter you, for I am not. I am only defending what I have said in a former letter—for when that dreadful teacher “glances” at a composition & throws it aside, it looks, to a casual spectator, somewhat as if my point is not well taken—as they say in the House. Yes—you are right—I would rather receive a letter written to me, even though it were short, than a composition, albeit Ⓐemendationif you did send the latter I wouldn’t be so criminal as to throw it aside with a “glance”—no sir-ee! That was just like Mr. Beecher, for the world. I might have known where that it came from. I sent to a San Francisco paper, the other day, a first-rate anecdote about Mr. Beecher which was told me by old Richelieu Robinson, your jolly member of Congress from Brooklyn. It was just like Mr. B., too.4explanatory note

And now while I think of it, Ancient Mariner, I wish you would just hint to Mr. Beecher in a sort of general way, some time or other, that you doubt if I ever returned him the change owing due from that $10 he entrusted to me that night at your house—do you remember?—when he wanted some funeral notices published. Now don’t ask him—that won’t do at all—but say you think I would be likely to steal it—you might mention that I used to steal things in the ship—say anything, you know, that will be likely to make him say whether he ever received that change or not. The Ⓐemendationamount is a matter of no consequence, but the idea of resting under even the remotest suspicion of having deliberately swindled a minister out of three dollars, is almost disagreeable to me. Now I wouldn’t speak so boastingly to everybody, but I will say to you, that in the whole course of my life I hardly remember ever having one instance of having stolen money from a minister. Why, I have been so strictly reared that sometimes I look upon a thing like that almost in the light of a crime. Ah, very few people h are fettered with the moral sensibilities that warp my judgment. But don’t you pay any attention to all this non sense. You have enough to do without my sitting up nights to invent new schemes for bothering Ⓐemendationyou. I just drifted into this subject because it occurs to me a little unpleasantly sometimes that that mail might have miscarried. But you know that it cannot have distressed me unbearably else I would have written Mr. Beecher on the momentous subject long ago.

“Do I suppose that you are going to tell me about those pictures & go into ecstasies over them, only that I may make fun of them?” Now what can you mean by such conduct as those? Don’t you accuse me of such things. Put you to all that trouble, —a task which you have done so well, & with such an honest good will and with such self-evident earnestness, & then make fun—eith of the subject of it? Upon my word & honor I would not do anything of the kind. I have joked about the old masters a good deal in my letters, but nearly all of that will have to come out. I cannot afford to expose my want of cultivation too much. Neither can I afford to remain so uncultivated—& shall not, if I am capable of rising above it. In this I am freely acknowledging what you have said in this connection. With your letter to go be guided by, I can talk learnedly about Murillo, & appreciatively, withal—& I mean to do it, too.5explanatory note That will rather surprise Mr. Mrs. ⒶemendationFairbanks, who looks upon me as a heretic in art. You say the legend of St Catherine is enchanting when given in full—cannot you try & give it me in full yourself? I wish you would.6explanatory note If you can’t recollect accurately, invent—invent—let the sin be upon my head. I think that book of mine will be full of inventions anyhow. Give me some more art essays—do. It just suits your pen, because you take so much interest in the subject—& I think some wiseacre has said people write with most facility upon matters they feel an interest in. Tell me about any of those old geniuses. I shan’t make fun. Why Ⓐemendationdid you go & lose that note-book?—hadn’t you better hunt it up?

I had no difficulty at all in reading your “scrawl,” as you call it—but I claim no credit on that account—it was distinct & legible. If you I did not have to “throw it in the fire.” If you want to “write better next time,” I am entirely willing that you should humor yourself to that extent, but I assure you that I am well able to decipher what you put upon the paper even without your taking that pains. Try Ⓐemendationme, , & see. & verily you shall see. There is no proof like circumstantial evidence.

I came near neglecting to thank you for furnishing me those consul’s’ names—but I do it now, & right heartily.7explanatory note You see I “survived.” You came near being sarcastic that time, my honored correspondent. That will never do. You just barely escaped a lecture.

I expect you to read all this, ◇ even if you miss a lesson or two—no, don’t miss the lessons—let your dinner go over till next day—this thing of eating dinner every day grows monotonous after a while, anyhow.

I have worked written myself up into a comfortable state of convalescence, I believe—& forthwith I will make use of it and write a newspaper letter. Please drop me a line or two—say several hundred.