My Dear Sir,--I am in town today to get what money the booksellers
will relinquish from their faithful gripe, and have succeeded now
in obtaining a first instalment, however small. I enclose to you
a bill of exchange for fifty pounds sterling, which costs here
exactly $242.22, the rate of exchange being nine percent. I
shall not today trouble you with any account, for my letter
must be quickly ready to go by the steam-packet. An exact
account has been rendered to me, which, though its present
balance in our favor is less than I expected, yet, as far as I
understand it, agrees well with all that has been promised: at
least the balance in our favor when the edition is sold, which
the booksellers assure me will assuredly be done within a year
from the publication, must be seven hundred and sixty dollars,
and what more Heaven and the subscribers may grant. I shall
follow this letter and bill by a duplicate of the bill in the
next packet.
The _Miscellanies_ is published in two volumes, a copy of which
goes to you immediately. Munroe tells me that two hundred and
fifty copies of it are already sold. Writing in a bookshop, my
dear friend, I have no power to say aught than that I am heartily
and always,
Yours,
R. Waldo Emerson