_Saranac_, _November_ 1887.
DEAR MR. BURLINGAME,—I enclose corrected proof of _Beggars_, which seems
good. I mean to make a second sermon, which, if it is about the same
length as _Pulvis et Umbra_, might go in along with it as two sermons, in
which case I should call the first ‘The Whole Creation,’ and the second
‘Any Good.’ We shall see; but you might say how you like the notion.
One word: if you have heard from Mr. Scribner of my unhappy oversight in
the matter of a story, you will make me ashamed to write to you, and yet
I wish to beg you to help me into quieter waters. The oversight
committed—and I do think it was not so bad as Mr. Scribner seems to think
it-and discovered, I was in a miserable position. I need not tell you
that my first impulse was to offer to share or to surrender the price
agreed upon when it should fall due; and it is almost to my credit that I
arranged to refrain. It is one of these positions from which there is no
escape; I cannot undo what I have done. And I wish to beg you—should Mr.
Scribner speak to you in the matter—to try to get him to see this neglect
of mine for no worse than it is: unpardonable enough, because a breach of
an agreement; but still pardonable, because a piece of sheer carelessness
and want of memory, done, God knows, without design and since most
sincerely regretted. I have no memory. You have seen how I omitted to
reserve the American rights in _Jekyll_: last winter I wrote and
demanded, as an increase, a less sum than had already been agreed upon
for a story that I gave to Cassell’s. For once that my forgetfulness
has, by a cursed fortune, seemed to gain, instead of lose, me money, it
is painful indeed that I should produce so poor an impression on the mind
of Mr. Scribner. But I beg you to believe, and if possible to make him
believe, that I am in no degree or sense a _faiseur_, and that in matters
of business my design, at least, is honest. Nor (bating bad memory and
self-deception) am I untruthful in such affairs.
If Mr. Scribner shall have said nothing to you in the matter, please
regard the above as unwritten, and believe me, yours very truly,