It always hurts me to the heart to say no to an application from a writer struggling upward.1explanatory note Every few days such applications come, & then I have to sit down & write the same old, old, hard sentences—not always, for once or twice I have succeeded in lo finding a place for a candidate. But now I have no resources. My own paper has all the expense of a literary kind that it can bear—so one of my partners tells me, (in whose hands rests the entire power to hire literary assistance).2explanatory note I say “no resources.” It amounts to that, for I shall forward the poems to the “Galaxy,” & in with a request that they buy open negotiations with you for such for publication—in and in due time will come polite thanks & excuses, but no trade. Possibly not—& let us hope not—but such is my usual experience, & it is by the lamp of experience that we customarily walk.3explanatory note

Do not speak to me of “boring”—for when one applies to me in behalf of one possessing real & manifest talent, then I am complimented, not bored. And even an application from a plain & painfully talentless source creates more of sorrow than anger in the recipient, more of pity than of ridicule—for there is somesthing so pathetic in the simplicity of it all, & the author’s cheery readin eagerness to step out upon the wide desert that in whose far centre sits the shining Damascus of success.

Poor little Emma Nye lies in our bed-chamber fighting wordy battles with the phantoms of delirium. Livy & a hired nurse watch her without ceasing, Ⓐemendation —night & day. It is not necessary to tell you that Livy sleeps as little as nurse or patient, & sees little but that bed & its occupant. The disease is a consuming fever—of a typhoid tu typeⒶemendation—& also the lungs seem stricken with disease. The poor girl is dangerously ill. W Ours is an excellent physician, & we have full confidence in him.4explanatory note

With great respect— I am