|BEING a publisher is not all sunshine, joy and johnny-jump-ups,
although the gentle and tractable reader may at times think so.
A letter was received two years ago by the publishers of this book, on
the outside of which was the request to the "P. Master of Chicago to
give to the most reliable man in Chicago and oblige."
The P. Master thereupon gave the letter to Messrs. Belford, Clarke &
Co., who have sent it to me as a literary curiosity. I want it to go
down to posterity, so I put it in this great work. I simply change the
names, and where words are too obscure, doctor them up a little:
Butler, Bates county, Mo., Jan. the 2, 1881.
I have a novle fresh and pure from the pen, wich I would like to be
examined by you. I wish to bring it before the public the ensuing
summer.
I have wrote a good deal for the press, and always with great success. I
wrote once an article on the growth of pie plant wich was copied fur and
wide. You may have heard of me through my poem on "The Cold, Damp Sea or
the Murmuring Wave and its Sad Kerplunk."