ALS signed “W. C. Bryant,” three pages on two adjoining sheets, 4.75 x 7.75, December 26, 1897. Letter to Dr. T. A. Cheney, in which Bryant declines to be his literary executor on account of age. In part: "I am sorry to learn from your letters that you are in a suffering condition as regards your health, and to perceive from the same source that your nervous system had been so greatly affected. That very circumstance, however, had its compensations and there are times when, if I rightly understand you, the disagreeable sensations of disease give way to delightful intervals of ease and images of heavenly beauty. If it is thus that Providence is always at hand to relieve us in our darkest hours. As to the papers of which you speak and the biography, and other matters which you suggest, might be confided to my care, I do not see how it is possible for me to assume the charge of them. You surely have forgotten my age. At eighty three one is very near the end of life, and I have already on my hands tasks which I regret that I ever assumed and which are more than a man so old ought to have encumbered himself with. You perhaps may have learned that the life of Washington Irving was shortened by his labors on the Life of Washington, which was scarcely finished at the time of his death. I find the disinclination to labor growing upon me, and reserve it as an admonition that my working days are approaching their conclusion, and that if I take any more laborous tasks upon myself I simply disobey a voice to which it is my duty to listen." In fine condition.
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