Private.

Bliss is dead. The aspect of the balance-sheet is enlightening. It reveals the fact, through my present contract, (which is for half the profits on the book above actual cost of paper, printing & binding,) that if Perkins had listened to my urgings & sued the company for ½ profits on “Roughing It,” at the time you cipherded on cost of Innocents, Bliss would have backed down & would not have allowed the case to go into court. I felt sure of that, at the time, but Perkins was loath to go for a man w with no better weapon to use than a “scare”—& Bliss went into the accounts & details & satisfied Perkins & his expert that 7½ per cent did represent half profits up to a sale of 50,000, & that after that the publisher had a mere trifling advantage of the author. So we dropped the matter.

I did a lot of ciphering, & struck for 10 per cent on the next book. Bliss stood the raise, but “proved” that paper was so much higher that 10 represented more than half profits.

I never bothered about the next 2 books—I cared nothing about them; being busy cursing from $1 $500 to $1200 a week out of Raymond; but this time, the play being long ago dead, I did take an interest. I told the directors I wouldn’t publish with them at any figure, because their business was too much spread out; Bliss had resigned; so I gave him the contract, at ½ profits. Then he was ashamed to leave the company to perish; so he asked my permission to transfer the book to them; & I said I was more than willing, since they would be obliged to publish only my book during the first 9 months. Well, as a consideration for the book, he required them to allow him one-half of the company’s entire profits for 3 years!—& they were exceedingly glad to comply. For it saved the company’s life & set them high on their pins & free of debt. Frank has taken his father’s place, & the business goes on.

Keep these things utterly private—mention them to nobody.

I have lost considerably by all this nonsense—sixty thousand dollars, I should say—& if Bliss were alive I would stay with the concern & get it all back; for on each b new book I would require a portsion of that back pay; but as it is (this in the very strictest confidence), I shall probably go to a new publisher 6 or 8 months hence, for I am afraid Frank, with his poor health, will lack push & drive.

Out of the suspicions which you bred in me years ago, has grown this result—to-wit, that I shall within the twelve-month get ‸ $40,000 out of this “Tramp” instead of $20,000. Twenty thousand dollars, after taxes & other expenses are stripped away, is worth to the investor about $75 a month—so I shall tell Mr. Perkins to make your check that amount per month, hereafter, while our income is able to afford it. This ends the loan business; & hereafter you can reflect that you are living not on borrowed money but on money which you have squarely earned, & which has no taint nor savor of charity about it—& you can also reflect that the money you have been receiving of me all these years, is interest charged against the heavy bill which the next publisher will have to stand who gets a book of mine.

Jean got the stockings, & is much obliged; Mollie wants to know whom she most resembles, but I can’t tell; she has blue eyes & brown hair, & three chins, & is very fat & happy; & at one time or another she has resembled all the different Clemenses & Langdons, in turn, that have ever lived.

Livy is too much beaten out with the baby, nights, to write, these times; & I don’t know of anything urgent to say, except that a basketful of letters has accumulated in the 7 days that I have been whooping & cursing over a cold in the head—& I must attack the pile this very minute.

With love from us