xT. 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 lobtens,, ete., 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 I. 
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- 
