As you see by the date, &c. I am home, on a visit to my mother & the rest. Mother is about as well as usual—has occasionally some trouble with rheumatism, but is cheerful & keeps up amazingly. We speak of you every day, & I have to give minute particulars of you, William, little Jenny, & all. My brother George is very well, looks hearty & brown as ever—much like he used to, only more serious—Jeff is at St. Louis, on the Water Works. Martha & the little girls are well—they are here in Brooklyn, occupying temporary apartments.
I am well as usual, & go daily around New York & Brooklyn yet with interest, of course—but I find the places & crowds & excitements—Broadway, &c—have not the zest of former times—they have done their work, & now they are to me as a tale that is told—Only the majestic & moving river & rapid sea-water scenery & life about the islands, N. Y. and Brooklyn, tower into larger proportions than ever. I doubt if the world elsewhere has their equal, or could have, to me—The waters about New York & west end of Long-Island are real sea-waters, & are ever-rolling & rushing in or out—never placid, never calm—surely they please this uneasy spirit, Me, that ebbs & flows too all the while, yet gets nowhere, & amounts to nothing—
I am trying to write a piece, to be called Democracy, for the leading article in the December or January number of the Galaxy—in some sort a counterblast or rejoinder to Carlyle's late piece, Shooting Niagara2, which you must have read, or at least heard about. Mr. Church3 strongly wishes it written. Mother & Martha send love, & I also, most truly—I shall probably return to Washington last of the week.
Walt.