Friday, October 24, 2014

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, October 14, 1860

North Shore, 14th October, 1860.

My Dear Charles, — I have been scribbling and scrabbling at such a rate that I have recently cut all my friends for my country. We are having a glorious fight. This State, I think, will astonish itself and the country by its majority. The significance of the result in Pennsylvania is, that the conscience and common sense of the country are fully aroused. The apostle of disunion spoke here last week, and, if there had been any doubt of New York before, there could have been none after he spake. Even Fletcher Harper, after hearing it, said to me, “I shall have hard work not to vote for Lincoln.”

I have been at work in my own county and district, and the other day I went to the convention to make sure that I was not nominated for Congress!

I have been writing a new lecture, “The Policy of Honesty,” and am going as far as Milwaukee in November. Here's a lot about myself, but we country philosophers grow dreadfully egotistical. I did cherish a sweet hope (it was like trying to raise figs in our open January!) that I should slip over and see you, and displace my photograph for a day or two, but I can only send the same old love as new as ever. The ball for little Renfrew1 was a failure, though I was one of the 400, — and his reception was the most imposing pageant, from the mass of human beings, that I ever saw.
_______________

1 The Prince of Wales.

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 137-8

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