My plan is that
you come on Friday, so as to attend the election-meeting of our club,
and then stay over Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday, which is the last
day of my holidays. How will that do? I am glad to hear your book is
going through the press, and you will be nearer your proof-sheets here.
I have pencils of all colors for correcting in all moods of mind,--red
for sanguine moments when one thinks there is some use in writing at
all, blue for a modest depression, and black for times when one is
satisfied there is no longer an intelligent public nor one reader of
taste left in the world. You shall have a room to yourself, nearly as
high and quite as easy of access as your tower, and I pledge myself that
my crows, cat-birds, orioles, chimbley-swallows, and squirrels shall
present you with the freedom of their city in a hollow walnut, so soon
as you arrive.
Now will you write and say when you are to be expected? I assure you I
have looked forward to your coming as one of my chiefest spring
pleasures, ranking it with the advent of the birds.
Always cordially yours,
J. R. LOWELL.
"I have smoked a cigar over your kind invitation," wrote Hawthorne, in
answer, "and mean to come. There is a little bit of business weighing
upon me (literary business of course, an article for the magazine and
for my volume, which I ought to have begun and finished long ago), but I
hope to smash it in a day or two, and will meet you at the club on
Saturday. I shall have very great pleasure in the visit.
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