Your letter must have reached here Saturday, but I didn’t run across it till this minute—it lay under the newspaper mail.

Good—then I will expect you at the time specified, & Mrs. Howells at the time which she has selected: & ye will both be welcome.

As to the apportionment of spoil, it would in most any play but this, be half & half, naturally & of course; but in this case I will smouch two-thirds if the reasons & arguments which I shall lay before you shall convince & wholly satisfy you; but if they shouldn’t, the apportionment will then be equal division of the swag, & no cussing.

Of course I ought to have gone to New Britain before this, but I allowed one thing & then another to interfere;—the main trouble being that I don’t like to travel so far without company, & I couldn’t seem to get the right kind. That is all arranged now, though; for unless Providence springs a purely wanton & unnecessary wedding or funeral on us, I can have Twichell’s company tomorrow. But with my prejudices, I never count any prospective chickens when I know that Providence knows where the nest is. Think How many an ill-assorted match has been suddenly precipitated, & o the parties to it doomed to life-long unhappiness, merely that Providence might head off a preacher who had it in his mind to do a sinner a good turn—& many a person has been untimely killed by Providence with no better end in view. And do how do you suppose the books are kept up there? Are the entries made with frankness, candor, squareness?

1845.

In account with John

L. Smith—

Time up not properly up till May 27, 1888; knocked out with lightening, June 4, 1845, in order to provide a funeral job for his pastor, who would otherwise have gone off junketing with a person whose errand it was desirable to balk.

It is doubtable.