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Hiawatha, Aug. 29, '01
My dear Dooley,
I have just written to Sanborn - on his new little book on Emerson - and told him who you were & that I should send these enclosures to you. He is in his 71st & I in my 70th year.
We were in College together & became friends because we read & listened to Emerson & Parker. Almost no one did in those days, in their native towns. Sanborn still writes for the Springfield Republican, and, from a radical in religion & politics, has become a Dem't, and anti-imp. &c. But he is good & true. I read no novels, but I read the Crisis and liked it. If our children are to learn anything about the Civil War they must learn it from Novels. "Historians" and publishers all want to please North and South. John Fiske did; my friend John Ropes acquired a Southern squint. I think a man must be an anti-slavery man in order to be able to understand that period. - They say Col. Nelson has owned the Times three months. I do not know; but it has become an excellent newspaper.
Your friend D. W. Wilder.
