Have just returned from visiting Mr. Dawson. He has printed an edition of 275, & they are ready to be put into the paper covers. —& said covers are ready. He wanted to know what price to put upon the book, so that he could state it in his announcement. I said I believed our idea was, to put a prohibitory price on it, to keep it out of the pirates’ hands until we had reaped our market. But he knocked that argument as cold as Gilsey House civility with the simple remark that if the pirates want a copy & can’t get it here on the 2d, they can wait a day & get it from Boston.

He seemed to think it would not answer at all to put the price of this little paper-covered volume at a heavier figure than $1. I said I would write you immediately, & you would telegraph him & set a price.

canceled with crisscrossing lines:

Hell, I wish you were here!—for just this moment I’ve struck an idea. It is this: let Dawson put this book at 15 cents a copy; not advertise the & not issue

But I reckon tain’t much of an idea, after all. Hurry up here dern your skin. I knew I should have a lot of dam business on my hands, if you didn’t come with me.