through that into every other department of my businesses,
spiritual and temporal; so that from about New-Year's Day last I
have been, in a manner, good for nothing,--nor am yet, though I
do again feel as if the beautiful Summer weather might perhaps do
something for me. This it was that choked every enterprise; and
postponed your Letter, week after week, through so many months.
Let us not speak of it farther!

Note, meanwhile, I have no disease about me; nothing but the
gradual decay of any poor digestive faculty I latterly had,--or
indeed ever had since I was three and twenty years of age. Let
us be quiet with it; accept it as a mode of exit, of which
always there must be _some_ mode.

I have got done with all my press-correctings, editionings, and
paltry bother of that kind: Vol. 30 will embark for you about
the middle of this month; there are then to follow ("uniform,"
as the printers call it, though in smaller type) a little volume
called _General Index;_ and three more volumes of _Translations
from the German;_ after which we two will reckon and count; and
if there is any _lacuna_ on the Concord shelf, at once make it
good. Enough, enough on that score.

The Hotten who has got hold of you here is a dirty little pirate,
who snatches at everybody grown fat enough to yield him a bite
(paltry, unhanged creature); so that in fact he is a symbol to
you of your visible rise in the world here; and, with Conway's
vigilance to help, will do you good and not evil. Glad am I, in
any case, to see so much new spiritual produce still ripening
around you; and you ought to be glad, too. Pray Heaven you may