TO OSCAR S. STRAUS[1]
Your very kind letter of November 15th has had to wait very long for a reply. I shall attempt no apology for you know what New York life is. I am sometimes quite out of patience with it and seriously think of transferring my household to some place in the country.
All I hear from you and about you is so good that as your friend I could hardly wish it better. I have no doubt you will come out of your official trials with honor and bring many pleasant memories home with you. I am not surprised to learn that you do not find much time for literary work. The performance of your official duties, strictly speaking, would probably leave you leisure enough. But it is the nothings of life, that part of social intercourse that does not do anybody any good, to which we have to bring the greatest sacrifices in the way of scattering and frittering away our working power.
Of myself I can only say that I am well and pretty firmly on my feet. I expect to sail for Europe in April, but it is not probable that I shall extend my travels as far as the dominions of the Sultan. When I shall have to return here, I do not know yet; perhaps about midsummer, perhaps later. I have begun another historical work, beginning where the Life of Henry Clay ends, in 1852. I intend first to write the history of the political struggles which immediately preceded the civil war; the period from 1852 to 1861, in one or two volumes. And if then I still have work enough in me, I mean to undertake a history of the civil work [war] itself—a political, not a military history. But I must confess that the task rises up before me in such awful proportions as
- ↑ Then U. S. Minister to Turkey.
