More when the mail shall come.
* * * * *
I am an idiot. I want to be clear on one point. Some of Hole’s drawings
must of course be too late; and yet they seem to me so excellent I would
fain have the lot complete. It is one thing for you to pay for drawings
which are to appear in that soul-swallowing machine, your magazine: quite
another if they are only to illustrate a volume. I wish you to take a
brisk (even a fiery) decision on the point; and let Hole know. To resume
my desultory song, I desire you would carry the same fire (hereinbefore
suggested) into your decision on the _Wrong Box_; for in my present state
of benighted ignorance as to my affairs for the last seven months—I know
not even whether my house or my mother’s house have been let—I desire to
see something definite in front of me—outside the lot of palace
doorkeeper. I believe the said _Wrong Box_ is a real lark; in which, of
course, I may be grievously deceived; but the typewriter is with me. I
may also be deceived as to the numbers of _The Master_ now going and
already gone; but to me they seem First Chop, sir, First Chop. I hope I
shall pull off that damned ending; but it still depresses me: this is
your doing, Mr. Burlingame: you would have it there and then, and I fear
it—I fear that ending.