Why, you little rascal! to throw such a handful of sarcasms at me. Bless your dear heart, that joke would have been “lost” if I hadn’t explained it, & yet here you are letting on that you would have seen through it without any assistance.1explanatory note But it isn’t any use to try to get around it in this way. “I’m crushed”—that is all there is about it. I am more than crushed—I am withered! Don’t you do me so again, or I shall have to box your ears when I see you—or kiss you, at any rate. Now you just cipher out those puns in the Autocrat2explanatory note yourself, Miss, since you are grown so dreadfully ingenious as to discover a joke after its is pointed out to you. {How’s thim?}

Livy darling, if you have two copies of Vanderbilt, send one of them to me—tear it out & enclose it in your letter. But if you haven’t two, I don’t want it.3explanatory note

Those wintergreens were deliciously fragrant, & I thank Mrs. Sue very much for them.—“Sister Crane,” I mean.

Indeed I wish somebody would wake me up at midnight & give me one of your letters—I think I would enjoy the surprise. As it is, I get them in the middle of the day, & have to walk about a mile to get to a place where I can read them in solitude & uninterrupted. If I could only have fortitude enough to keep them until I had gone to bed, they would be worth double as much to me. I am sorry, now, that I did not write you a good long letter upon that occasion, since it was to be so honored.

Little sweetheart, I had a scary dream about you last night. I thought you came to me crying, & said “Farewell”—& I knew by some instinct that you meant it for a final farewell, & that we were never to see each other & never to be anything to each other any more. It m Ⓐemendation made me feel as if the world had dropped from under my feet! And so, through a simple dream, it was revealed to me the sensation I had vainly tried in waking o hours to imagine when thinking of Emma Sayles.4explanatory note I pray Heaven I may never know the reality, if for the anguish of this vision has shown me what torturing myser misery Ⓐemendation it would be. I dreampt that I put my arms about you & soothed away your grief a little, & persuaded you to sit down—& then I talked to you, & bye & bye your tears ceased & your eyes brightened, & your hand sought mine & nestled in it, & the old loving trust that is so beautiful to see came back into your face,—& Livy was mine again! Forever & forever. But the instant I awoke I looked for all around, in a bewildered way, & half doubting, & when I saw that you were nowhere in sight, all that hev heavy Ⓐemendation distress swept back upon me like a flood & I thought the reconciliation had been the dream, & that the farewell was reality—& then I felt O, so unspeakably desolate. But presently, when it flashed upon me that I had written you before I went to bed—& that I had received letters from you within a day or two—& then saw your pictures lying almost within reach, I could have jumped out of the window for joy! And I have been jolly all day—& have mentioned to myself, many, many times, that it was all a hideous dream & she is my darling yet. If anybody were to tell me now that a dream is able to turn the hair gray in a single night, I would believe it. I sorrow for John Greeves, & for Emma Sayles. I comprehend their case now. I did not, before.

I think this is Thursday, but I don’t know. Yes, it is Thursday—I remember, now. But the days drag so—it ought to be Friday. I Ⓐemendation look for “Uncle Cholley” Saturday. He said he would come, when I left him in New York. I wrote him last night to telegraph me & say what train he would be in, so that I could meet him. We shall have to call on his friend Alice Hooker.5explanatory note

When I began writing this letter I had just finished going over the last of the Book MSS. & scratching out for the last time. No proofs have come in since Monday or Tuesday—none will come in for a day or two yet. When they do, Bliss will try to get duplicates to send to you—thinks he can get them if anybody can. Well, I should think he could—there is no use in being ridden over by an old—old—Englishman like that Electrotyper. If he don’t behave himself I shall have to call on him yet, & kill him. He is only 60 years old, & may be is too young to die.

I love you, Livy. I love you better & better every day, my little darling. And it will take more than dreams to separate us, won’t it? Indeed it will.

I have read Victor Hugo’s new story—all that has been published so far. It is wild, wierd Ⓐemendation—& half the time incomprehensible.6explanatory note

Livy dear, you must take the Bagster Bible once more, & transcribe the next section of sequences in the life of Christ & send to me—won’t you. Do it some time when you have nothing important on hand. If I were there we would take the references right from the printed tables themselves, & so save the trouble—but as I am away off here, I must ask you to follow the old plan again.7explanatory note

Now I havn haveⒶemendation nothing henceforth to do but write newspaper letters, read proof, & scribble letters to Livy—the two former irksome duties, the latter a very dear & happy privilege.8explanatory note Being obliged to go through all the old proofs yesterday, nearly every purple ink correction brought my Livy before me, with her work, in Mrs. Crane’s little parlor—& often a remembered mark reminded me of just what you were doing & how you were looking when it was made. I would give much to own those rusty old bundles of paper—I would keep them carefully always, & hoard them as treasures above gold & silver & precious stones.9explanatory note

And now that my work is become easy, I would call on Gen. Hawley once more, but he is not in town.10explanatory note I want to get located in life. I want to be married, bless your dear little heart.

But I must stop. If this were written in my usual hand it would make sixteen pages.11explanatory note I must not forget that I inflicted ten or twelve pages on you last night. However, you like it, dearie, as much as I like a long letter from you, & so I only said that in fun. I waft you a low loving Ⓐemendation kiss, a warm embrace & a fervent blessing, my own darling.