Dear George, To G. B. Loring CAMBRIDGE, ELMWOOD, 1837. What think you of the epigram and "effusion" I sent you in my last? Trusting they proved acceptable, and premising that they serve to fill up a letter, I send you another little piece, which I wrote (as indeed you will perceive by reading) in literally a moment of leisure. It is addressed to our old horsechestnut, whose protecting arms are thrown around the room in which I am sitting. It is the unhappy, but I trust not disconsolate, survivor of two, one of which stood at the other corner of the "family mansion," and expired last summer of a lingering, and (I should think from the groanings of its aged limbs in the blast) painful, disease. OUR OLD HORSE-CHESTNUT TREE I Long hast thou waved thy giant pride, Thou old horse-chestnut tree, Around that room, whose casements wide 2 And thou hast heard our merry shout (My brother Bob and I), When 'neath thy shade we played about |