Sunday, December 30, 1888.

     8 P. M. W. on the bed. Very good day. Visitors few. Doctor not in. Inquiries by Miss Hunter. Harned came awhile. Nobody else. W. quite communicative. "I consider this on the whole a good week—freer, easier, calmer than for some time: while not agile not boisterous I never experience that strange sinking, giving away, in the head, I did formerly. I can write, I can read—I am getting a little stronger: it is in that direction I most suffer now—the want of strength." Said he had been busy all day. Some mail this evening, though little. "I got The Critic: tried to read it: but it was decidedly dry." I asked: "Even The Lounger?" He laughed: "I forgot that: you mean the tariff talk?—the aim of actors to put a tariff on companies contracted for abroad?" It was "outrageous," he said: "outrageous"" it was "nothing but restriction—restriction." "Consistently carried out the tariff would close our ports absolutely," he said: "and do now, in fact: abolish America itself." But it has struck me that the whole noise this time is the work of a wag. Can it be?" Was "glad to see" that there were "some who objected to be classified with reactionaries: Jefferson, Florence, for example."

     W. received a copy of Long Islander containing a marked paragraph acknowledging the book sent the editor. Was this to go to Dr. Bucke? "No—I guess not: it is but a trifle: I send the paper off every week to an old sea captain." Bucke spoke in one of his letters of Parkman's histories. W. said: "I never read them—not one of them:yet by all accounts they are set down as being strong and fascinating." He had "never met Parkman"—in fact, knew "little about him." Sanborn discussed. W.: "I have a good picture of him here somewhere: I will hunt it up for you. Did you never see Sanborn? He has a striking

     Handed me a check for Oldach: thirty-four dollars and eighty-six cents. Then said: "Was there another? did n't you speak of another?" I indicated Adams' bill for plate printing. He took his check book, kept wrapped in brown paper on the table: "I guess I'll make it out now while I 'm in the humor." When handed to me: "That closes us all out? Our skirts are clear now?" This pays every bill.

     "Do you want this?" he asked, handing me a sheet from the table. "It is the manuscript of the Note at Beginning: I rescued it from the wood box for you." I protested against his profligacy in threatening to throw such treasures away. He was jolly over it. "Well—there 's lots more here prepared to follow it!" I kicked. "Lets's make a swop: I'll furnish paper for the fire if you 'll give me the manuscripts!" He cried: "That 's a square offer, sure enough. We 'll see—we 'll see!" Bucke refers every now and then in his letters to his own probably early death. W.:"Yes: I notice the Doctor makes such allusions, but it is in a distant sort of a way—the second, third, fourth, even fifth remove." What was Bucke's age? He did not know. Seemed to think it odd. "I can't even come a good guess when he was born: Maurice must be forty-five, fifty, years—thereabouts. I wonder?" I inquired of W. concerning Pease recently here. Weston met him at the last Contemporary meeting: had come there (Pease had come) in a flannel shirt: talked well, candidly. He spoke to Weston of W. as "the greatest man in the United States to-day."

     I heard this in a play: "a walking shadow ending in nothing." W. asked me: "Don't you like it? 'ending in nothing': how fine that is: that is the review." Again: "Most of these book reviews so-called are echoes of echoes: the fellows don't seem to have a bit of originality: they run after each other like sheep: one says a thing: then the other says a thing: then they chorus together—the whole kit and crew: they say, one, two, three, damn so and so: they say, four, five, six, save so and so: that 's the way they proceed: like so many monkeys on the limb of a tree chattering in concert." "You don't feel that they are all so?" "No—not at all: all but the exceptions: there are exceptions. Emerson was quite vigorous in talking about the critics—talking with me: he said: 'I seem to mystify them—rather mystify than antagonize them': which I guess was true. I seem to make them mad—rile them: I mystify them, too, but they don't know it: they only know I am vile, indecent, perverted, adulterous. Bryant was very nice to me generally: he seemed to follow my history somewhat—knew about me: he thought I had 'the whole wolf pack' on my heels and he would say again: 'As you have challenged the whole world I don't suppose you are surprised or resentful when you find the whole world out against you with its hounds.' It did not seem to me that Bryant was wrong: what else could I have expected? When John Morley came to see me that time he made some remark of this same tenor. 'Criticism has isolated you here in America,' Morley said; which was true: but it would also have been true to say: 'You have isolated yourself.' I am not a squealer: I don't think that a man has any call to go out breaking heads and expect the people he attacks to bless him for it: in a case like mine it 's give and take: after I 'm on right foundations no opposition can upset me: if I am falsely rooted nothing can save me."

     No day passes now but W. hands me over some document which he says is for my "archives." I said to-night to him: "You are giving me some great stuff nowadays: I will find