My Dear Friend,--Behold my account! A very simple thing, is it
not! A very mouse, after such months, almost years, of promise!
Despise it not, however; for such is my extreme dulness at
figures and statements that this nothing has been a fear to me, a
long time, how to extract it from the bookseller's promiscuous
account with me, and from obscure records of my own. You see
that it promises yet to pay you between $60 and $70 more, if
Mr. Fuller (a gentleman of Providence, who procured many
_subscribers_ for us there) and Mr. Owen (who owes us also
for copies subscribed for) will pay us our demand. They have
both been lately reminded of their delinquency. Herrick and
Noyes, you will see credited for eight copies, $18. They are
booksellers who supplied eight subscribers, and charged us $2 for
their trouble and some alleged damage to a copy. One copy you
will see is sold to Ann Pomeroy for $3. This lady bought the
copy of me, and preferred sending me $3 to sending $2.50 for so
good a book. You will notice one or two other variations in the
prices, in each of which I aimed to use a friend's discretion.
Add lastly, that you must revise all my figures, as I am a
hopeless blunderer, and quite lately made a brilliant mistake in
regard to the amount of 9 multiplied by 12.
Have I asked you whether you received from me a copy of the
_History?_ I designated a copy to go, and the bookseller's boy
thinks he sent one, but there is none charged in their account.
The account of the _Miscellanies_ does not prosper quite
so well....
Thanks for your too friendly and generous expectations from my
wit. Alas! my friend, I can do no such gay thing as you say. I
do not belong to the poets, but only to a low department of
literature, the reporters; suburban men. But in God we are all
great, all rich, each entitled to say, All is mine. I hope the
advancing season has restored health to your wife, and, if
benedictions will help her, tell her we send them on every west
wind. My wife and babes are well.
--R.W.E.