P. S. You are right about keeping back a day’s wages. I’m agreeable to it. Mail enclosed letter to Mr. Lawrence.

You won’t need to be away from your post half so much, presently. We shall all be in Hartford in less than two weeks, now—we leave here Sept. 17. So you see Hartford is nearly off your hands. One trip, on brass account, to Boston, is all you will be likely to have to make thither. It would have been an excellent thing if we could have found an assistant for you, months ago; but if you fail to find one now, we can worry along.

Weather permitting, we run up to Fredonia next Tuesday, via Rochester, where we shall tarry over night. I say weather permitting, for that trip cost your aunt Livy many months of pain & misery & doctor-treatment, once,—so I want endurable weather, next time.

1. I am quite sure that that is the proposed color of my book-backⒶemendation; but can’t be positive, of course.

2. I offer this suggestion. Let Patterson Th Trot that design through; & when you have cast it in spelter, ship the cast to Providence & ask them to cast it in brass with their utmost nicety—cast it & re-cast it till they get a perfect plate. Then let them do the finishing themselves ship it to Osgood to be finished up by a first-class finisher.

2. Or, if you prefer, write to Osgood, give him the address of that Chelsea foundry, & say I wish he would call there himself, if he can find the time, & see if they will undertake to cast that plate perfectly in brass, from the spelter pattern. If yes, then ship the spelter pattern to Osgood.

Thus we may get rid of a trip to Boston & Providence for the present.

But mind—do the thing which shall seem best to you. That is, make these trips yourself if you think best.

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Now you begin to perceive, yourself, what I have insisted upon for about a year & a half—that the brass end of Kaolatype is the big end.

Your idea about steel seems most excellent. Try it at once. Can’t you try it with in your own Kaolatype works? Or would you prefer to try it in Providence, & thus not “give it away” to your own workmen?

1. Will the clay stand that prodigious heat without consuming?

2. Won’t the clay burst asunder & fly all to pieces?

Try it at once. Take an old file rasp & coat it with clay—however, maybe you can get just the sort of base you want, by giving a steel-workman 24 hours to make it in.

I hope you will succeed, & will prove your theory. Then we will make a strong effort to patent that idea; & at the same time patent the general idea of applying Kaolatype to the casting of brass; & also at the same time patent the application of K to the casting of metal cylinders for calico & wall paper printing, &c.—(for I have thought out methods of making those things, & I am very sure we can do it. I spent 3 days over these problems, last week, & I believe I solved them.)

You see, if we can patent these applications of K, individually, we shan’t need to buy that Washington stock, for we shall own all of K that is really worth owning—that is, we shall own the entire brass end of it. Still, I should want to get hold of that stock by & by, anyway; & I should also want to get back those Charleston & Colorado licenses, or get the contracts amended so as to shut out brass—else some of them might go to infringing the brass patent, & it might not be safe policy to try to stop them—for that confounded K patent, which looks weak, at a first glance, is really horribly strong & dreadfully comprehensive—seems to cover everything.

I am going to give you a note to Munn & Co (Scientific American.) Prove your steel-base theory, first. Then go to them & see if they will undertake to get you a patent on it.

Meantime, take a look at those wall-paper cylinders at Mr. Beck’s, & see if we can’t produce cylinders that will answer. You remember, the figures on the cylinder are formed of pieces of brass fastened on. Suppose we took a couple of iron or steel troughs, picture of a trough in the shape of a half cylinder which, when joined together by a hinge, would form a hollow cylinder picture of a whole cylinder. And suppose we coated the inside of each trough with K clay; then engraved the wall paper figures in it; or then joined the troughs together; then ran it full of spelter or iron; & afterwards bored out the cylinder thus formed, to admit the wooden shaft or axis (& save weight & metal.) Many of those cylinders would do, in spelter elec copper-faced by electro-process; & any of them would do in iron, I believe. I don’t think much pressure is brought to bear on them.

Now you look at Beck’s cylinders & talk with him a little. If the my project is feasible, talk to Munn & Co about it, also, & see if they can patent it. (You see, one weak thing about the K patent is, that it has only about 9 years to run, now.)

Munn & Co can also attend to the renewing the English K patent for you. (And they can throw a lot of machinery-engraving into your hands if they want to, & if you offer sufficiently advantageous terms.)

They can tell you (or their foreman can,) where to find the expertest brass-founder in New York, no doubt, & save you the delay & trouble of going or sending to Boston & Providence. in margin: Take a printed copy of the Kaolatype patent with you, to show to M. & Co.  Get it

If you make a success of my book-back, Osgood & I will find a sufficiency of that sort of work for you to do; & you can get it done at the brass founders until you shall have learned all about the business—then we will set up a shop of our own.

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Judging by the figures you send me, our scale of prices for brass-work can be simply & easily arranged (by & by, when we are full of work,)— thus: Charge 300 per cent profit on whatever a job costs us, & it will then seem cheap to the man who orders it. And when we get our own foundry going, we chan charge 400 percent profit., & the job will still be cheaper than the die-sinkers could do it for. And we could charge a die-sinker’s full price & still run a formidable opposition to them, because we could save a customer so much time——we could give him his job so much quicker than the die-cutter could.

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Don’t tell Osgood or anybody too much about this business. Don’t “give it away.”

Do you understand, now, the order of proceeding? Viz:—1. Prove your steel-base theory; 1. Put the English-patent renewal into Munn’s hands, & say you will come again, about some American patents which we want to secure; get; 2. Prove your steel-base theory; 3. Post yourself at Beck’s—ask him if iron & electro-spelter cul cylinders would suit him; 4. Then return to Munn & Co & try for our patents.

I enclose a note of introduction to Munn & Co. Maybe you better mail it to them & ask them when you may call. Or take it along without mailing, just as you please.

If we succeed in getting those patents, I suppose we shall have to think of patenting them in England, France, Germany & Canada—an expensive & often useless business. But then I should try to sell a foreign interest to Osgood, so as to cover the expenses & have a partner who could take care of the foreign end.

By the time you shall have followed out the above programme & are ready to show what the results are, I shall be in New York, & then we can talk the field over & lay out our campaign.

There’s a perfectly enormous field, in New York city alone, for our flat-brass plates——just bear that in mind. And there’s heavy competition for Kaolatype, but none at all for the brass end of it. I was to pay Sneider $3,000 cash for