“Mr. Hawthorne cannot walk ten minutes now without wishing to sit down, as I think I told you, so that he cannot take sufficient air except in a carriage.  And his horror of hotels and rail-cars is immense, and human beings beset him in cities.  He is indeed very weak.  I hardly know what takes away his strength.  I now am obliged to superintend my workman, who is arranging the grounds.  Whenever my husband lies down (which is sadly often) I rush out of doors to see what the gardener is about.

“I cannot feel rested till Mr. Hawthorne is better, but I get along.  I shall go to town when he is safe in the care of General Pierce.”

On Saturday this communication from Mrs. Hawthorne reached us:—­

    “General Pierce wrote yesterday to say he wished to meet Mr.
    Hawthorne in Boston on Wednesday, and go from thence on their way.

“Mr. Hawthorne is much weaker.  I find, than he has been before at any time, and I shall go down with him, having a great many things to do in Boston; but I am sure he is not fit to be left by himself, for his steps are so uncertain, and his eyes are very uncertain too.  Dear Mr. Fields, I am very anxious about him, and I write now to say that he absolutely refuses to see a physician officially, and so I wish to know whether Dr. Holmes could not see him in some ingenious way on Wednesday as a friend; but with his experienced, acute observation, to look at him also as a physician, to note how he is and what he judges of him comparatively since he last saw him.  It almost deprives me of my wits to see him growing weaker with no aid.  He seems quite bilious, and has a restlessness that is infinite.  His look is more distressed and harassed than before; and he has so little rest, that he is getting worn out.  I hope immensely in regard of this sauntering journey with General Pierce.

“I feel as if I ought not to speak to you of anything when you are so busy and weary and bereaved.  But yet in such a sad emergency as this, I am sure your generous, kind heart will not refuse me any help you can render....  I wish Dr. Holmes would feel his pulse; I do not know how to judge of it, but it seems to me irregular.”

His friend, Dr. O.W.  Holmes, in compliance with Mrs. Hawthorne’s desire, expressed in this letter to me, saw the invalid, and thus describes his appearance in an article full of tenderness and feeling which was published in the “Atlantic Monthly” for July, 1864:—­

“Late in the afternoon of the day before he left Boston on his last journey I called upon him at the hotel where he was staying.  He had gone out but a moment before.  Looking along the street, I saw a form at some distance in advance which could only be his,—­but how changed from his former port and figure!  There was no mistaking the long iron-gray locks, the carriage of the head, and the general look of the natural outlines and movement; but he seemed to