I have been constantly hoping to have you here again and now begin to see something more than a glimmer of fruition. Ashton has spoken (at my instigation) to Mr Otto the Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Interior in your behalf, and Mr Otto says that if you will write a letter of application to the Secretary of the Interior, he will endeavor to put you in.

Now, dear Walt, do this without delay. The object of your writing the letter is to get a specimen of your hand. Pick out, then, a good pen and write as fairly as you can a letter formally applying for a clerkship. Then enclose a copy of this letter to Ashton, so that he can follow it in to the Secretary. The first letter you will, of course, mail to the Secretary direct.

Do this as soon as you can. We shall fetch it this time. I have every confidence that you will get a good and an easy berth, a regular income, &c, leaving you time to attend to the soldiers, to your poems, &c,—in a word, what Archimedes wanted, a place on which to rest the lever.

I shall wait anxiously to hear that you have sent on the letters. I have been thinking of you constantly for months and have been doing everything I could to secure you a foothold here. For a long time, deceived (I must think) by Swinton's pretensions to influence and by his profuse promises, I hoped to get you either one of the New York State Agency Assistantships or the place of an Assistant Librarian in the Congress Library (the latter would be really a sinecure if the right one was got). But who follows Swinton follows a will-of-the-wisp and though I followed him remorselessly, every blessed day for several weeks, and gave him neither rest nor peace, as the saying is, I got nothing except promises. Since I gave him up, I have been badgering Ashton, who is a man of another sort, as what he has done shows. The difficulty was to get the right thing. He secured me some little time ago a place in the Post Office for you, but I declined it, because I thought it was not the proper place for you. I think a desk in the Interior would be first rate.

I told Ashton there was nothing I would not do for him if he would carry this affair to a safe conclusion. He has been very good and anxious in your behalf. He would have given you a desk in his own office if a vacancy had occurred as expected.

Don't forget to do as I tell you immediately.

I never answered your letter of September 11th, but, dear Walt, I always think of you, though I write so seldom and so badly. You are never forgotten. I read your poems often, I get their meaning more and more, I stand up for them and you, I expound, define, defend, vindicate, justify them and you with all the heart and head I have whenever occasion demands.

I got the Times with your long letter about the Hospital experiences, which I read with a swelling heart and wet eyes. It was very great and touching to me. I think I could mount the tribune for you on that and speak speech which jets fire and drops tears. Only it filled me with infinite regrets that there is not a book from you, embodying these rich and sad experiences. It would be sure of immortality. No history of our times would ever be written without it, if written with that wealth of living details you could crowd into it. Indeed, it would itself be history.

I saw your letter about the prisoners. It was as just as powerful. I have been hearing for a fortnight past that it is the Secretary of War's "policy" which prevents exchange, and if this is true, I pray from my heart of hearts that it never may be forgotten against him. Reddest murder is white to an act like this and its folly is equal to its crime. It would be a demonism of another kind indeed than the Southerners', yet as bad, perhaps worse, because sprung from calculation rather than hatred.

Such things make one sicken of the world.

I write this letter at intervals between the press of office work, which has driven upon me in spasms today, but pretty severely when it did come. Any incoherences in it, you may refer to the obfusticated state which such hurryings have induced in me.

Farewell, dear Walt. I hope to hear from you very soon. We are all tolerably well at home. Eldridge comes every evening. We often talk of you. On Christmas, you were wanted to make the dinner at home perfect. We all spoke of you. On Thanksgiving it was the same. At dinner that day, I said "I wish"—and stopped. "What?"—said Nelly. "I know," chirped little Jeannie, "he wishes Walt was here." Which was true—that was the unuttered wish.

Let me hear soon.