James Russell Lowell to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, October 24, 1859

Cambridge, Oct. 24, 1859.

My dear Higginson, — You prevent my wishes. I was going to ask you for something. Editorially, I am a little afraid of [John] Brown, and Ticknor¹ would be more so. But perhaps I misunderstand you. Anyhow, as long as I edit I want you to write.

I don't quite agree with you about the last number. I think “Dog Talk” one of the cleverest articles I have printed — just on an easy, gentlemanlike level that fitted the topic. It was written, I believe, by an officer in the English army — the same who wrote “The Perilous Bivouac” and “The Walker of the Snow.” I liked them all. But heavens! could you look into my drawers! I do the best I can. As to my notice of Bartlett² — it would have been better had I ever kept notes of Yankeeisms. Groping for them in one's memory won't do, and I wrote with the printer's devil waiting in my best easy-chair and reading my newspaper before I had looked at it — perhaps the best Americanism of the lot.

Always truly yours,

J. R. Lowell.

_______________

¹ Messrs Ticknor & Fields had now become the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly.

² Bartlett's “Dictionary of Americanisms.”

SOURCE: Charles Eliot Norton, Editor, Letters of James Russell Lowell, Volume 1, p. 333-4