"Can't you read figures, dear? Don't you know a five when you see it?
Aren't you able to tell a two from a four unless they are labelled? I
fondly believed you were, but as indications point the other way, I
will have everything in a right line hereafter, so that I shall just
have to drop you into the groove at the beginning and you will spin
along of yourself to the end. I am your serf and slave--till I get
the upper hands of you, which I shall one day--I always do, sooner or
later. Don't be frightened, though. I shall roar you as gently as a
sucking-dove. And please remember that Hebrews is not Romans--or, as
one cannot remember what he never knew, please be informed. Aren't you
glad you have somebody who can always set you right?
"There is one thing about my letters though;--when you do find the
place you know where you are. Yours I don't. Now what do you mean? Do
you mean that my book is not good enough to publish? If you do, why
don't you say so?
"When I was in Congress anything that was indefinitely postponed was
as good as lost. I wish you would say, straight as an arrow, just what
you mean. You need not be afraid of wounding my feelings. I have boxed
them up in ice and sawdust and set them on the top shelf till such
time as my fortunes shall permit me to indulge in such luxuries. I am
rhinocerine and pachydermatous. Lay on Macbeth, or Duff, or whoever you
are.
"You see it is absurd for you to talk about postponing the publication
of a general kind of book if it is worth publicating at all. If it were
what I want it to be, you would rectangle it up in ten minutes and have
it out. If it is not what I want it to be, I don't want it published at
all. If it is only so-so, pay-the-way-y, very good, I will have none of
it. I want it to be triumphantly good. I don't want any drawn battle.
I want an unconditional surrender, with fort, guns, and ammunition. If
I can't have that I don't want anything. Now can I have that? You tell
me. I know you know. I have been flattered to death all my life....
If the book is coarse, and violent, and insipid, and diffuse, and
superficial, and egotistical, and worthless, say so. That is just what
I am afraid it is, and it keeps me awake nights.
"It occurs to me that possibly you may have so much on your hands that
you cannot publish it. I don't believe that, though. People can always
find time to do what they will to do,--any way I can, and I am a female
Atlas. But if it were so, and you would tell me that you thought the
book was good, I would get somebody else to publish it. I should not
like to do it to be sure. I have set my heart on your publishing my
first book. You see, as Mrs. Browning says, 'I love high though I live
low.' You know if you aim at the sun you won't probably hit it, but
you will hit higher than you would if you made your target out of a
scrub oak. I don't want to go into the world through the back door. I
want to go in, sir, by the main entrance! with drums beating and colors
flying! with body-guard on each side, and carriages drawn up in line!
That means you--Brummell & Hunt is the triumphal arch and the Seventh
Regiment! But you see I am tired to death and disgust of waiting. It
is three years now since I took to writing in good earnest, and all
this while I have been burrowing under ground. It is almost two years
since I sent 'My Garden' to the 'A. M.' Two years apiece for the other
two things will be four years, and by that time I shall be a coral
reef, with all the pulp of my soul dried up, and nothing left but the
dead shell. You understand I am not impatient of preparation. I am not
only willing but eager to work. If I thought I could be more worthy by
waiting; if I thought crudeness would mellow, I would wait; but the
book is done. It is not a question of improving it, but to be or not to
be.
"It would be a great disappointment, and I am sure a positive loss
to me, not to have you publish the book if it is fit to publish. You
would give me a prestige which I assure you I have sense enough to
value. And yet will not the book, if it is good, make its own way,
even if it should be born in a garret? You see I look at this from my
standing-point only, for you of course are too well established to be
disgraced by my failure or illustrated by my success. I am the only
one affected, don't you see? If I fail it will nerve me. If I succeed
it will give me a point of support. You understand, by success I don't
mean that I desire to make a sensation. The public, whose countenance
I court, would be comprised in a hundred men and women. If I should
secure their suffrage, the rest of the world might go whistle. If the
hundred put me on the pedestal, the ten millions cannot pull me down,
for it is quality and not quantity that leads in this world, no matter
what the world thinks.
"I want to be out too, because that thing is only the inch of an ell.
If that succeeds I have half a dozen others--'City Lights,'--in the
same style--and 'Rocks of Offense,' which is to put everybody right in
religious matters. You don't know what my prophetic style is? I tell
you it leaves Isaiah and Jeremiah nowhere! Then there is 'Night Caps'
for children, and 'Holiday Stories' for all the holidays, and 'Stories
of the Old School-House,' etc. I have sent those to the Tract Society
and all the Eleemosynary Institutions, but they were not considered
pious enough, and I am afraid you profane establishments would think
they were too pious, so betwixt the clergy and the laity I should come
to the ground with a thud, from which, like Antæus, I always gather
strength.
"I don't believe you half read my letters. I don't know that I blame
you, but it leads you into obvious mistakes. You say you want to print
several of the articles--two certainly. Goosey-goosey-gander, where
shall I wander; did not I tell you that all but those two had been
printed before, and the last one which you had rejected? Why do you
talk?... I am going to Athens to buy a new dress the first pleasant
day of next week after Monday. Would you be willing to send those
two papers around to----? I can look them over and manipulate them,
and return them the next day. If you obey the impulse of the natural
heart, unmodified by pressure of editorial duties, you will tell me, as
General Taylor told Santa Anna, 'Come and take them.' And I would be
glad to do it and talk about these matters instead of writing. But you
must know that I cannot talk--I say what I don't mean and I mean what
I don't say, and so an interview would be entirely inconclusive and
unsatisfactory.
"You will understand from this brief epistle that it is not the book
that won't keep so much as it is my own self.
"If I have said anything here that I ought not to say, pray make
believe that--there, I just remember that my little book is not
'Night-Caps' but 'Make-Believes'--there is a book 'Night-Caps' already.
Well, what I was going to say is--make believe I have not said it. I
am writing in greatest stress of time, for our mail goes at unearthly
hours, and I cannot stop to be proper. I wish you would give me a
general absolution, retro-and pro-spective, till this business is over.
Yours very truly."