^T. 51.] TO CHARLES WRIGHT. 483 



and drop a good deal of it. My desk has long been 

 so covered deep with unanswered letters, etc., that I 

 have abandoned it, and now sit over on the other side 

 of the table. 



If I sit down and answer a letter right off the day 

 it comes, as I am now doing with yours, and as I do 

 with purely business letters, etc., then it is safe. If I 

 add it to the heap, it is a gone case, and I fear will 

 never be really answered. 



Eaton, too, as you know, has been very hard worked, 

 in his father's office. 



Well, there is no State now in some part of which 

 the star-spangled banner does not float. Lincoln is a 

 trump, a second Washington, steady, conservative, 

 no fanatical abolitionist. Foote, of your State of Con- 

 necticut, is putting down his foot on the Mississippi. 

 McClellan is to fight a great battle at Yorktown. 

 Another bloody battle may be fought near Corinth, 

 Mississippi. New Orleans will soon be ours, please 

 God, and then this wicked rebellion will be done for. 

 I pray God I may live to see the end of it, and the 

 States brought back, quietly if they will, forcibly if 

 they must. 



I know it will rejoice your heart to see the thing 

 done. And it will be worth all it costs. 



Come now, here is a good long letter for a man as 

 tired as I to write, who has been five or six hours in 

 lecture-room, working hard. 



August 1. 



Here is a bit of reading for you, substitute for 

 letters, which in truth I have not surfeited you with 

 lately. Who can write letters in these trying times ? . . . 



Last spring my health felt pretty seriously im- 



