Yet it is not alone that my country is fair,
     And my home and my friends are inviting me there;
     While they beckon me onward, my heart is still here,
     With my sweet lovely daughter, and bonny boy dear: 
     And oh! what’s the joy that a home can impart,
     Removed from the dear ones who cling to my heart.

     It is learning that calls them; but tell me, can schools
     Repay for my love, or give nature new rules? 
     They may teach them the lore of the wit and the sage,
     To be grave in their youth, and be gay in their age;
     But ah! my poor heart, what are schools to thy view,
     While severed from children thou lovest so true!

     I return to my country, I haste on my way,
     For duty commands me, and duty must sway;
     Yet I leave the bright land where my little ones dwell,
     With a sober regret, and a bitter farewell;
     For there I must leave the dear jewels I love,
     The dearest of gifts from my Master above.

     NEW YORK, March 18th, 1839.

17th.  Went, in the evening, to hear Mr. Stephens, the celebrated traveler, lecture before the Historical Society, at the Stuyvesant Institute, on Mehemet Ali.  Public opinion places lecturers sometimes in a false position.  An attempt was here made to make out Mehemet Ali a great personage, exercising much influence in his times.  An old despotic rajah in a tea-pot!  Who looks to him for exaltation of sentiment, liberality and enlargement of views, or as an exemplar of political truth?  Mr. Stephens, however, knew the feeling and expectation of his audience, and drew a picture, which was eloquently done, and well received.  This popular mode of lecturing is certainly better than the run-a-muck amusements of the day.  But it panders to an excited intellectual appetite, and is anything but philosophical, historical, or strictly just.

18th.  I received instructions from Washington, to form a treaty with the Saginaws, for the cession of a tract of ground on which to build a light-house on Saginaw Bay.

The next letter I opened was from Mrs. Jameson, of London, who writes that her plan of publication is, to divide the profits with her publishers, and, as these are honest men and gentlemen, she has found that the best way.  She advises me to adopt the same course with respect to my Indian legends.[91]

[Footnote 91:  I followed this advice, but fell into the hands of the Philistines.]

“I published,” she says, “in my little journal, one or two legends which Mrs. Schoolcraft gave me, and they have excited very general interest.  The more exactly you can (in translation) adhere to the style of the language of the Indian nations, instead of emulating a fine or correct English style—­the more characteristic in all respects—­the more original—­the more interesting your work will be.”