Here’s a letter which I wrote you to San Francisco the second time you didn’t go there. Soulé has written again (see enclosed) & now I have just admonished him to ship his poems to you & you’ll tell Osgood squarely what you think of them & he will accept or decline them as he pleases. I told Soulé he needn’t write you, but simply send the MS to you. O dear, dear, it is dreadful to be an unrecognized poet. m How wise it was in Ch—— W—— Stoddard to take in his sign & go for some other calling while still young.

I’m a laying for that Encyclopediacal Scotchman; & he’ll need to lock the door behind him, when he comes in; otherwise when he hears my proposed tariff his skin will probably crawl away with him. He is accustomed to seeing the publishrer impoverish the author—that spectacle must be getting stale to him—if he contracts with the undersigned he will experience a change in that programme that will make the enamel peel off his teeth for very surprise—& joy. O, no, you were not “fulsome.” No, that is what Mrs. Clemens thinks—but it ain’t so. The proposed work is growing, mightily, in my estimation, day by day; & I’m not going to throw it away for any mere trifle. If I make a contract with the canny Scot, I will then tell him the plan which you & I have devised (that of taking in the humor of all countries)——otherwise I’ll keep it to myself, I think. Why should we assist our fellow-man for mere love of God?