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I leave Saratoga in a day, severing my connection with thousands
of friends and Commercial readers. I cease writing with a
feeling of regret. I commenced writing because I thought
modern journalism had become entirely too serious an affair, and
I wished to throw a little sunlight into the columns of the daily
press, too dreary with an array of facts clothed in bony and
funereal language.

I cannot leave this charming watering-place without thanking
my personal friends for their moral and intellectual support—I
cannot leave without thanking the press generally for its many
kind mentions and quotations from my letters—without saying
a bon voyage to the Richmond and Troy Whigs, to the New
York Sun, to the Cincinnati Commercial, to the Albany Evening
Journal and Times, and to Captain Ritchie of the Daily Saratogian.
They have been friends, alas! whom I would always
like to take home to supper with me!

I now go about other work, to write books and spin for the
magazines, and may be for the daily press. I wish I could take
everybody with me who has written me nice encouraging letters
this summer—everybody who has shaken my hand, like those
Christian gentlemen, Colonel Bridgeland, Colonel Heywood,
Judge Mosely, Fernando Wood, Dr. Corey, Mr. Bissell, Mr. Wall,
and Mr. Beekman! May we meet again. As they say in the
East:

“May the Prophet take from my life and add to theirs.”

Melville D. Landon.

Congress Hall, September 4th, 1871.

p628-240

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