My Dear Mrs. Beecher:—I have arranged your Jabberwocks & other devils in procession according to number & rank, on the piano in the drawing-room, & in that subdued light they take to themselves added atrocities of form & expression, & so make a body’s flesh crawl with pleasure. There is a compulsory fascination about them which has drawn me in there every half hour all day; every time I go they look more intelligent, & more alive, more suggestive of a convention of Consciences met together to play roots on their poor human proprietors; (see my late Atlantic article.) If I come down at midnight (with my usual dose of hot-Scotch stowed) I shall very easily be able to imagine I see them climbing about the furniture, bearing their rigid tails on high & inspecting everything with their critical brass eyes. I tell you they re are different creatures now from what they were this morning. Then, they were desiccated vague imaitations of the familiar works of God, & soulless; now, they are real creatures out of w Wonderland, secretly alive, natural, proper, & ungrotesque to eyes used to them in the world they came from—& so they take the fiction all out of the Jabberwock & I recognize & accept him as a fact.

You have had a genuine inspiration; you have wrought it out, not lamely, but to perfection. It is the most ingenious thing of this generation. I shall hate to see any of these enchanting monsters go out of the house; they grow so in grotesque grace, hour by hour; & the more of them there are in a group the happier is the effect. Make more—don’t leave a root unutilized in Chemung county. But don’t go to the last limit—that is, don’t breathe actual life into them; for I know (if there is anything in physiognomy & general personal appearance) that they would all vote the Democratic ticket, every devil of them.