That it should be damned

not to print any more of it. is nothing. I could print it, as Fielding did one of his stupid farces, with "as it was d-d in Putnam's Magazine" on the title-page. But I could not bear to have you go on publishing it to the detriment of the Magazine, merely out of friendship to me. You have no right to, for you are a trustee, and your first duty is to Putnam. I thank God for giving me at least this talent -that I love my friends better than I do my own pride, and can almost persuade myself that I love them nearly as well as my interest. There is no spatula with which you can hold the Public's tongue while you force things down their throat, and if there were there would be no use in it. These rubs, I fancy, brighten a man's wits, and may help to let him know if his mind be an Aladdin's lamp with which he can build palaces, or mere Brummagem which shows the copper the more you scour. At any rate, it is a charming provision of nature that all such adventures end, like Falstaff's scene with Prince Hal, in our thinking better of ourselves for valiant lions. ever after. The chief result of the affair will be that I shall add to a letter which I wrote yesterday to Story, in which I spoke of "Our Own," this P. S.: “I just hear from Briggs that it is irretrievably damned." Conclusum est de illo-periit.

Meanwhile the thing has done me good already. It has given me something which I have a right to be annoyed at and so relieved me of some imaginary stuff that darkened my mind. I do honestly feel more troubled on your account than my own, for I am sensible that I have disappointed a hope you had that I