[187]I seem to have so much to fill my time, and yet there is my Maine story waiting. However, I am composing it every day, only I greatly need living studies for the filling in of my sketches. There is “ old Jonas,” my “fish father,” a sturdy, independent fisherman farmer, who in his youth sailed all over the world and made up his mind about everything. In his old age he attends prayer-meetings and reads the “Missionary Herald.” He also has plenty of money in an old brown sea-chest. He is a great heart with an inflexible will and iron muscles. I must go to Orr's Island and see him again. I am now writing an article for the “ Era” on Maine and its scenery, which I think is even better than the “Independent” letter. In it I took up Longfellow. Next I shall write one on Hawthorne and his surroundings.
To-day Mrs. Jewett sent out a most solemnly savage attack upon me from the “Alabama planter.” Among other things it says: “The plan for assaulting the best institutions in the world may be made just as rational as it is by the wicked (perhaps unconsciously so) authoress of this book. The woman who wrote it must be either a very bad or a very fanatical person. For her own domestic peace we trust no enemy will ever penetrate into her household to pervert the scenes he may find there with as little logic or kindness as she has used in her Uncle Tom's Cabin.” There's for you! Can you wonder now that such a wicked woman should be gone from you a full month instead of the week I intended? Ah, welladay!
At last the house was finished, the removal from Brunswick effected, and the reunited family was comfortably
