I have not yet answered your letter by W.H. Channing in words, though I
have said a great deal to you that you have not heard. What an interrupter
of conversation is this absence! Neither have I told you of my Vieuxtemps
experience, nor shall I close my letter without speaking of Knoop, who by
the gods' favor concerts to-night. Your letter by W.H. Channing
crystallized a resolution which has been quiet in me for the winter, so
still that it needed only a powerful jerk to induce crystallization at
once. So the day or two succeeding its receipt found me busy in expressing
some thoughts about reform and association which I meant for _The
Present_. But the necessity for expression seems to have been satisfied
without publication. The essay remains as quietly in my portfolio as did
the idea in my mind. So it was with an article on Ole Bull that I wrote
some weeks since for the _Tribune_. The need seems to give the thought
expression and form, whether it then lay still or fly abroad upon paper
wings. Besides, printing does give a dignity to thoughts that the author
should feel that they deserve, a permanency too. The newspaper that
escapes the turmoil and tear and dust of years bears the same aspect as
all its fellows of the same date that were ushered into the morning
parlors with it; and so some commentator on Ole Bull and Vieuxtemps or
what not shall run down to the lower generations more noiselessly, yet as
certainly, as Shakespeare and Plato. There is a singular pleasure, too, in
publishing what nobody thinks is yours. It is addressing the world not as
Geo. Curtis, but as some distinguished messenger, the mystery of whom is a
charm, if nothing more. Yet unfortunate me! I could never maintain the
secret long. Is that from pride or because you cannot endure to see men go
wrong, if you can help them? When Charles Dana came running to me with
what he thought Emerson's poem, how could I help saying, "It is mine." In
that case, at least, it was sympathy for Emerson's reputation that
prompted the speech.