"To us mere mortals it seems as if you authors were--as the countryman
told Arthur Gilman his lecture was--'plaguey kinder shaller.' That
... you should surrender yourself at discretion to some publisher is
natural enough, but that A. should be systematically humbugged out
of his dollars, and have the credit which I--and I presume mankind
generally--gave him for exacting so much for his copyright as to make
the price of his epistles and things extortionate, is, as the man
said of his wife's death, ridic'lous. There is nothing in the last
'Adriatic' but ----'s poem. Tell him that the world thinks he imposes
on us by making us pay a dollar and a half for his very thin books. We
suppose he gets their weight in gold per copyright."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]