Dear Mr. Clements,

I don’t see what excuse you had for sending me such a great big book, which would have cost me ever so many dollars, but I assure you it was very welcome in spite of that—more welcome than you could have guessed it would be, for independently of the pleasure I have had from your other writings, and the agreeable recollection of your visit to my house in company with Mr Locke, some parts of your travels had a very special interest for me. I may mention especially your visits to Palestine and Egypt. You looked at these two countries in a somewhat different way it is true, from Dr Robinson, or Lepsius, but I always like to hear what one of my fellow-countrymen who is not a Hebrew scholar or a reader of hieroglyphics, but a good humored traveller with a pair of sharp twinkling Yankee (in the broader sense) eyes in his head, has to say about the things that learned travellers often make unintelligible and sentimental ones ridiculous or absurd. Not long ago I read Hepworth Dixon’s book about the Holy Land and since that Lady Herbert’s. What a different way they had of looking at things to be sure. I am tolerably familiar with other books on the East and I have a large collection of stereographs of Egypt and Palestine—one of the largest I think that anybody has about here. So you can imagine with what curiosity I followed you through scenes that were in a certain sense familiar to me and read your familiar descriptions and frequently quaint and amusing comments, from such an entirely distinct and characteristic point of view.

I was rather surprised and much pleased to find how well your ship’s company got on together. I had an idea they got sick of each other. I once crossed the ocean with another human being occupying the same stateroom—a German, who was well enough, I don’t doubt—but didn’t I loathe the sight and smell of him before our forty two days passage was over!

Well, I hope your booksellers will sell a hundred thousand copies of your Travels—don’t let them get hold of this letter for the rascals always print everything to puff their books—private or not—which is odious but take my word for it your book is very entertaining and will give a great deal of pleasure.