Cambridge April 25

1855.

My Dear Hawthorne,

There is no disguising the fact, that I am making use of
you to an alarming extent. But then in return you are in a fair way of
finding out all my flirtations. To calm any feelings of jealousy in your
bosom, I will confess that not all the letters directed in my hand are written
by me. Some of them are by my wife. They are so to speak, and to use a favorite
expression of Professor Cleaveland, deprecatory of his cigars - "semi-Spanish"
(pronouncing it "seemy") one kind of tobacco outside, and another inside. But
I have the honesty to put the worst side out.

The Spring is really beginning to-day; the grass is green,
and the sun more than warm - one might venture to call it red hot. Sand us
your damp Salt Winds, for I pant and long for moisture, whether in the shape
of brooks, or sea or fog; - anything but this perpetual dryness this baking
in a great oven - with coals on us and coals under us. I envy you the moist,
pliant elastic skin, which fits the body, like a soft kid glove, and which you
people in England are permitted to wear; while we are cased as it were in
parchment, upon which one might easily write our Wills and done with it.
What was Ziska's drum head to such material as we can furnish? Yours,
nevertheless, parchment and all,

H W. L.

P. S. I want very much you should know my friend Freiligrath, the German Poet. When you go to London you must make it a point to see him. His address may be learned from Andrew Johnson Jr. Bullion Office Bank of England Ferdinand Freiligrath, 3 Sutton Place Hackney London.