No, Livy dear, I don’t think Pond ever fails to mail my letters; but it was as I wrote you from Keokuk or from Chicago—between St Louis & Keokuk I was heavily driven, & thereforeⒶemendation did not write during 2 days; but that was all—2 days; but on many other days I wrote twice.

I wrote one letter in Keokuk, & Orion took it in his hand & insisted on carrying it at once to the street box a couple of blocks away. A couple of hours later, it transpired that he had the letter in his pocket; could remember going to the lamp-post box & coming back wondering vainly what his errand thither was for. I wanted to take the letter, then, but he begged for leave to try again; so I let him. But probably he failed again.

We walked 9 blocks through a heavy snowstorm to see the “ghost”— the mysterious something on a school-house window pane which from the street looked like a crayon drawing of a pretty girl, with ribbons & other proper decorations upon her hair & about her chin. But all I could see was a strong purple splash stain in the g in or on the glass, the size of one’s head, & resembling nothing in this world so much as a ragged big bath-sponge with 2 or 3 of the usual round holes in it. By a strong effort I could imagine that it looked a little like the old-fashioned horned & distorted devils of the picture books, with an open mouth filled with tushes; but no stretch of my imagination was able to make anything much like a human face out of the thing. Lord, what a curious thing the imagination is! Do you know, there are people there who see in that shapeless purple blur a striking portrait of Martha Washington; & others who see in it a portrait of some distinguished man or other; Orion & others see in it all that goes to make up the head & face of a very pretty girl; & there are a lot of idiot spiritualists who see a purpose of God in it, & a spirit face sent from him to confound the disbelievers in their doctrine. If all the fools in this world should die, lordy God how lonely I should be. ◊

In Quincy I saw—well, first it was an old man with bushy gray whiskers down to his breast, & farmer-like clothes on. When I saw him last, 35 years ago, he was a dandy, with plug hat tipped far forward & resting almost on his very nose; dark red, greasy hair, long, & turned rolled under at the bottom, down on his neck; red goatee; a most mincing, self-conceited gait—the most astonishing gait that ever I saw—a gait possible nowhere on earth but in our South & in that old day; & when his hat was off, a red roll of hair, a recumbent curl, was exposed (between two exact partingsⒶemendation) which extended from his forehead rearward over the curve of his skull, & you could look into it as you would into a tunnel. But now—well, see OW Holmes’s “The Last Leaf” for what he is now.

And there also I saw Wales McCormick, the giant printer-cub of 35 years ago—he & I were apprentices & the above dude, Pet McMurray, was the journeyman.

I love you, sweetheart.