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146 nature he abhorred and disdained the compromising, often insincere, shifts of aspirants for publication. His real aspiration and joy, like that of all true scholars and authors, was in the creation and expression, not in the publication. The latter was subsidiary and resorted to mainly at the urgence of friends and for financial ends. On this point, he wrote Mr. Elliot Cabot in 1848, as included in "Familiar Letters,"—"Time & Co., are after all, the only quite honest and trustworthy publishers that we know. I can sympathize, perhaps, with the barberry bush, whose business it is solely to ripen its fruit (though that may not be to sweeten it) and to protect it from thorns, so that it can hold on all winter, even, unless some angry crows come to pluck it. But I see that I must get a few dollars together presently to manure my roots At any rate, I mean always to spend only words enough to purchase silence with, and I have found that this which is so valuable, though many writers do not prize it, does not cost much, after all." This indifference to publication was induced, in part, by disappointments; in part, it was the expression of his constant plea for absolute independence of thought and form, without any restrictions imposed by printers or public. He continued to accumulate thoughts and observations for the books