Executive Mansion,
Washington, Sept. 24,
1864.
MY DEAR NICO:
Your despatch was just brought in. I took it to the
President, and he told me to tell you, you had better loaf round the city a
while longer. You need some rest and recreation and may as well take it in New
York as anywhere else. Besides, you can't imagine how nasty the house is at
present. You would get the painters' colic in twenty-four hours if you came
home now.
Politicians still unhealthily haunt us. Loose women flavor
the anteroom. Much turmoil and trouble. . . . The world is almost too many for me.
I take a dreary pleasure in seeing Philbrick eat steamed oysters by the
half-bushel. He has gotten a haven of rest in the family of some decayed
Virginian gentry; really a very lucky chance, good, respectable, and not dear.
Schafer must be our resource this winter in clo’. If you
don't want to be surprised into idiocy, don't ask Croney and Lent the price of
goods. A faint rumor has reached me and paralyzed me. I am founding a “Shabby
Club” to make rags the style this winter. Write to me some morning while you
are waiting for your cocktail, and tell me how's things. Give my love to the
fair you are so lucky as to know.
Isn't it bully about Sheridan?
SOURCES: Abstracted from Clara B. Hay, Letters of
John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 222-3; Michael Burlingam,
Editor, At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and
Selected Writings, p. 95
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