of knowledge up to twenty-five, more careless after that time, and by thirty impervious to thumps or any other mode of getting ideas into them, living on through the rest of their lives in a condition of crystallized prejudice. How beautiful, then, seem the few instances of people who retain their simplicity and power of metamorphosis to the end !
I send you only a letter of miscellanies, which will do as well to go to the dead letter office as something better ; and before I send any more poems I will wait to see if you get this. There cannot be, I think, another Mead- ville in Pennsylvania, but, if the simple direction is not enough, let me know. Your father and I spend occasion- ally a pleasant and long evening together. Remember me to your wife, and make my respects to Miss Sarah, whom I have seen, though but once ; and remember me
Yours as ever,
J. W. Randall.
��.-^ _ Boston, Monday, Aug. lo, 1861.
Dear Frank,
I have had some thought of going westward and of stopping to see you ; but Stanley, whom I proposed to my- self to take with me, was obliged to go to Wilton, and, as we had both just taken a long tramp together, I have not felt greatly inclined to take another journey so soon. Stanley has now seen a large portion of the ground we went over together some years ago, together with other country which you have not seen.
In our recent jaunt we climbed Mt. Washington, and remained on its top all night ; a wearisome journey for a hot day. I think there is not a descending step in the
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