i have been waiting, for months, to get through with my book, so that i might then write you with my own hand, like a christian. but the book is not done yet, for the powers of heaven and earth and hell are leagued against it, and it may never be finished at all. i have been on the home stretch, with three quarters of the course behind me, for two full months, and i have been laboriously jogging along all those two months; but what i write on one day i tear up the next, so i make but little permanent advance toward the goal. in the work i have suffered two months of literary gout; all pain and no getting on. koto tells us you have been enduring a siege of the unmetaphorical gout, and you may well believe that this has brought out the full strength of our sympathy, we knowing what that disease is by what we saw of it when you were here.

you have heard of the recent political waterloo, of course. it was a great thing. it gives us new confidence in the soundness of our republican system. for it showed in the most striking way, that when the body of the people percie eiveⒶemendation the right, they go straight for it, over-riding every thing in the nature of leadership and influence. bossism proved to be green withes, when the public sampson puts his hands on it. all the republican newspapers wrought with their usual energy, for their candidates, and did really imagine they were influencing and leading the people. their complaisancy probably received something of a shock when the republican roof caved in on election day. if there is one thing in america that has less influence than the pulpit, i am satisfied it is political journalism. we had paltry men for candidates in this state, on both sides; so we had only the modified luxury of voting for nobody; but if we had had big men on the democratic slate, we should have had new york state’s luxury of going for them in a solid body, leaving the republican aspirant without a following. if folger had been man enough to spew up the republican nomination, and say that in as much as he had always been a clean man he proposed to remain clean and not soil himself to accommodate people, it is believed he would have carried the new york state governorship without any trouble. if human beings could learn lessons, his ridiculousⒶemendation fate might be a lesson to future public men; but when public or any other men begin to prove by the lessons of experience, when it is some body else’s experience, not their own, it will be a sign that the world’s end is near.

the childredⒶemendation and the madam are in perfect health. susie and clara are slowly but steadily becoming musicians. jean adds to her vocabulary about four words a week, two of them german and the other two english. she remembers koto yet, and often hails her photograph on the mantel-piece. the children have said some recordable things during the past months; but i can call to mind only the last one. this was clara, at breakfast yesterday morning. livaⒶemendation and mrs. langdon were talking about a telegram in the paper, which described how a young girl lost her life on the stage at cincinnati the night before. she was playing william tell’s son with the apple on her head or some such business as that, and the actor who tried to shoot the apple with the rifle sent his bullet through her brain instead, killing her instantly. then the horror and fright of the vast audience was described, with their shrieks, and the fainting of women. clara’s thought was plainly with that poor actor, the center of this convulsion. she reflected a moment, and then said with cast-iron gravity, “i should think he would have been embarrassed.” she was mortally embarrassed herself when she discovered by the out-burst of laughter that her word did not mean what she had supposed it did.

sleighing began for the first time this winter, two or three days ago. come right along both of you and take your proper and customary seats, and jingle around with us a spell.

mrs.Ⓐemendation clemens has been shipping some christmas trifles to koto on behalf of this tribe, but i think she has so miscalculated the distance that it will be as much as a bargain if they strike japan before 1883. the whole family send a world of love to you and koto, along with the heartiest good wishes of the season.