I have written
once before to Low, as I think I told you, and on the 25th mean to go
to a notary with Mr. Dawson, as he tells me it is the right thing to
do.
Yours always, O. W. H.
P. S. Made a pretty good dinner, after all; but better a hash at home
than a roast with strangers.
With much the same experience of asthma as a result, he visited
Princeton three or four years later, and wrote after his return:--
296 BEACON STREET, August 24, 1871.
My dear Fields:... I only sat up one whole night, it is true, which
was a great improvement on Montreal; but I do not feel right yet, and
it is quite uncertain whether I shall be in a condition to enjoy the
club by Saturday. So if I come, all the better for me; and if I don't
come, you can say that you have in your realm at Parker's not "five
hundred as good as he," but a score or so that will serve your turn.
I cut the first leaves I wanted to meddle with in the last "Atlantic"
for No. IX. of the "Whispering Gallery," and took it all down like an
oyster in the height of the season. It is captivating, like all the
rest. Why don't you make a book as big as Allibone's out of your store
of unparalleled personal recollections? It seems too bad to keep them
for posterity. When I think of your bequeathing them for the sole
benefit of people that are unborn, I want to cry out with Horace:--
"Eheu--_Postume, Postume!_"
Always yours, O. W. HOLMES.
Again, three years later, he writes: "I hope you are reasonably
careful of yourself during this cold weather.
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