10
doctors prescriptions, taking, as usual, a shower bath 
each morning.           Since visiting him I have had
two attacks, of the duration of three days each,
the latter however only accompanied with low spirits,
despondency, not the violent hypochrondria � wherefore
I believe I�m getting better.                  I am never en-
tirely free from pain in the upper portion of the
spine.  It is as though the spinal marrow were un-
dergoing some radical change.    I find it fatiguing
to walk erect.   Work agitates me, throwing me into
a painful nervous excitement which I cannot master.
Yet I must do the little I can get to do.
  My book is accepted by the Masons conditionally.
They want to publish it at 50 cents, don�t care
about spending more than $200 for cuts, and
postpone its appearance till the autumn, or rather
winter.        No books sell now, � it is, they say,
the dullest of times among their fraternity.        I
am indifferently well content, objecting however to
the proposed price.    I think the book�s worth a
dollar [word crossed out].    The matter is postponed.   I do
not fear that it will get born in due time.
  Parton and his wife have just moved to Brook-
lyn, where she has purchased a house.    I used, as
wont to drop in at the Waverly on Saturday
nights, always finding Walt Whitman there,
and sometimes Oliver Dyer.     The latter, editor
of �the Ledger,� and the �John Walter� of Fanny�s