I am just from a two days' visit to Norwich, Ct., with Mrs. and when I next come to Greenfield-if that ever is - I

B.;

shall bring her with me.

To his wife, while reporting the Know-nothing Council in June, 1855, Mr. Bowles writes:

PHILADELPHIA, Wednesday.

Your letter of yesterday came this afternoon, and rejoiced me by its various good news. I continue well, but feel lazy and stupid, and have loafed about quietly all day, accomplishing nothing as yet but a letter to the Tribune. I am going to stir about more to-morrow, and see the various interesting sights of this beautiful city. You would be very much pleased to be here with me, and I should be very pleased to have you. What a pity we can't both be pleased! Philadelphia would gratify you more than either Boston or New York. The streets are so much neater, are so regular, and bear such a finished look in their stores and dwellings, and the stores are the most magnificent in the country. The great number of large and elegant stores is surprising. Broadway does not compare in this respect with Chestnut street. The ladies get themselves up here on a magnificent scale, and the number of beautiful women magnificently dressed who may be seen up and down the great street - Chestnut-is beyond what any other city can furnish. They are all arrayed in their summer costumes, and some of these would quite "stun" our country folks if displayed on Main or Maple St. How long I shall stay here is uncertain. If the Tribune people desire it, I may stay through the farce, for such it is getting to be. I shall consult my own ease and comfort about it very largely. Give my love to A- and congratulate her for me on her new step forward. It is a happy day in any one's life that records such a step,- that finds the heart fitted to lay hold on eternal life. Heigh-ho! I do not know as I shall ever get to such a pitch of goodness and right feeling; and yet I should be unhappy if I did not believe I should some time or other."

Kiss the "childer"; remember me to Mother, Amelia, and Hannah, and reserve for yourself a generous share of all the loving and husbandly affection which the subscriber respectfully places at your disposal. Write me often, and, remember, take good care of yourself. You can't be too prudent.

PHILADELPHIA, Friday night.

MY DEAREST MRS. BOWLES: Trusting that the fact that the letter due from you to-day did not come does not augur any abatement of affection, or any return of ill health (dire calamities both!), I proceed to make my daily bulletin: pulse regular, appetite fair, though little dulled now by a pint of strawberries and cream and several mutton chops; temper happy "as could be expected under the circumstances," viz., absence from the benignant light of your presence, only partly counterbalanced by two glasses of "fine old port," accomplished with the aforesaid mutton chops and strawberries; personal appearance as bewitching as usual,— fill out the balance to suit yourself.

I

Yesterday was quite warm -to-day is cool and delightful. I am enjoying myself passably, and politics in a quiet way, but am impatient to be off, partly because people are beginning to suspect me as the correspondent of the Tribune, which is not so pleasant as an incog., and partly because I have had enough of it for play, though as work it is amusing enough. hope affairs continue comfortable at home, and that your strength and health mend together. You can hardly tell what a relief it would be to me to have you well and strong again. I try to believe that what is, is right, unless we can see it to be the result of some negligence or imprudence of our own. But we will try not to repine, for though everything is not as we would have it, still our sources of happiness are above the average of humanity in richness and deepness.

Give my love to all, including the rosy-cheeked and goodnatured Hannah; kiss the babies,—tell A— I hope the new responsibilities will not make her any more solemn or severe,— and accept yourself what a wife ought to have from her affectionate, and he hopes faithful, husband.

PHILADELPHIA, Monday evening.

Your long and piously disposed letter came yesterday morning, and had to answer the purpose of going to meeting, as I believe it did, and more too. For though I staid at home, and wrote a long letter to the Tribune, I nevertheless believe that your kind preaching more than made up for the wickedness of that performance, which is more than I could say of the discourses I ordinarily get of a Sunday. The subject to which you allude with so much appropriate earnestness is one I often think of, though, as you are aware, rarely if ever speak. I have not much faith in myself, but I would encourage you to go forward in your determination. I never could get up much interest in the forms of devotion, though I know they are essential-more, however, to some minds than to others, more perhaps to yours than to mine. The essentials of manliness and goodness, of justice and mercy, I put first. In them I always feel an interest, and strive, though at a distance, to follow. I will readily join in such simple acts of religious devotion as are consistent with my feelings and position, if you desire it, in the hope, also, that it may prove more a source of satisfaction and improvement than I have found before.

I am detained here still, but expect now to get off some time to-morrow. The thickest of the fight is now on, and if it comes to an end to-morrow morning I shall quit immediately. I am impatient to return home, but I feel that I am greatly useful to myself and the paper by remaining here, and I mean to make the Tribune pay all the bills. We have had a good deal of excitement here, and much fun. I have made some very pleasant and very valuable acquaintances, and done some good to the right side of the political questions of the day, and so ought to feel satisfied that I came on.

To Henry L. Dawes.

August 6, 1855.

I put into my paper all I know and all I feel as to politics. I have an abiding faith in fusion, and don't allow myself to be disheartened by open opposition, lukewarm friendship, or timid advocacy. I am very certain it has got to come,

1

and the means by which it shall be achieved are of little moment to me, so that they succeed. There will be a quarrel in the K. N. convention to-morrow, perhaps a split. I am indifferent to it. It cannot put off the end long. If it denies fusion, it will kill itself, as the Whigs did last year. I confess it is uphill work bringing people together, and the state is reaping in the harvest of ill feeling, bitter prejudices, and unconquerable aversions, the evils of Coalitionism, Know-nothingism, and hunker Whiggery. Thank God, I do not feel responsible for either. I shall keep the Republican untrammeled and independent, doing everything it can for fusion, favoring any proposition that looks to it, and denouncing everybody against it. We get plenty of abuse for our course, and myself am personally and weekly denounced and vilified in the Anti-fusion American papers, but I can stand it, and am only troubled by the reflection that it may inspire me with the ridiculous idea that I am an important individual, and breed that meanest of all delusions, a political ambition.

Everybody is holding back and waiting for something to turn up. If fusion does come, as I am sure it will, and I have any influence in its future operations, I hope to remember with effect some of the cowards of the day.

I am glad the agony has given place to the joys of maternity. I am glad it is a boy. Boys are institutions. They have a future, a positive future. Girls are swallowed up,—they are an appendage,-a necessary appendage, it may be,-probably they are, but still they are appendages. I hope the boy will live, will grow up, will be worthy of his father and mother, will inspire in them hope and confidence and trust, and moreover that he won't always live in North Adams, so long as there are such fine places as Springfield outside of it.

And so hoping, believing, and trusting, and wishing that you may so hope, believe, and trust, I am yours truly

To Charles Allen.

September 11, 1855.

Have you deserted your old friends? Or are you not recovered from your sea voyage to Nantucket? I never had my

promised letters, nor have I learned even indirectly the experience of that journey, yet I have a severe suspicion that it

was a bad failure. your brother's wife.

We have sad accounts of the sickness of
How is she?

I see old Aiken is on the side of the righteous, while you and George T. remain out in the cold for the present. Well, the gallery has its advantages, but I am not permitted to enjoy them if I would, and I would not if I could. I have an abiding faith that out of the present chaos of political debauchery we shall get some decent politics by and bye. May be not this year, but sooner or later. And I can afford to wait, since I already have all the reward I seek,-the consciousness of being right, making a mark, and securing an enviable position for the Republican.

But if you are in the land of the living, shout, if but to say "damn."

To H. L. Dawes.

October 10, 1855.

Croak, croak, croak! Why the devil can't Berkshire do something besides ? Let those who are right go to work. The K. N's are playing the brag and lying game most awfully. That story you mention is all a lie. There never was any arrangement about bolting at Worcester on the part of the Republicans, that I know or heard of, and I certainly should know it if there had been.

We shall elect Rockwell. If not, I shall invite the foreign missionary society to look into Massachusetts. How many speeches may I promise you for in this region during the three weeks preceding election?

If there had been such a bolt as the K. N. story says the Republicans threatened at Worcester, it was all right and justifiable. Gardner's speech proves this. And though there was no concert, no arrangement, no nothing except individual opinion that such must result if Gardner was forced upon the convention,- -a bolt was justifiable and proper and necessary, if it could be useful. That is the only question - and I am prepared to accept any issue the enemy choose to make on this question. Gardner sustains us all. I will not deny there would