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NEWBURYPORT, MASS., _Dec. 24, 1888_.
DEAR SIR: I have examined with much interest and pleasure your work
upon Mexico, with a title so extravagantly modest as almost to efface
the author. Let us accept our fate. It is our destiny to live in an
age when all human distinctions are abolished, or about to be
abolished, except the advertiser and his victim. Your work appears to
me to be quite a model, and I wish I were going to be a tourist in
Mexico that I might have the advantage of using it.
One word more with regard to your biography. In the case of a person
like Mr. Conkling, whose vocation it was to express himself in words,
and whose utterances were often most brilliant and powerful, I think
you should make great and free use of his letters and speeches. Is not
a volume of five hundred pages too small? Could you not make a work in
two volumes, and get Mark Twain to sell it by subscription?
Another: I hope you feel the peculiar character and importance of that
part of New York of which Utica is the central point. It does not
figure much in books, but there are many strong and remarkable
families there. I should like to see it elucidated. The first
questions to be asked of a man are: Where, and of whom, was he born?
Very truly yours,