“On my return home on Saturday, I found your note without date, informing me that you had received no reply to your ‘note of last Tuesday.’ I have not replied to your note of February 11th, because I could not understand the purport of it, and hoped you might be in town soon to explain it.
“In the last letter I received from you, some days before the note referred to above, written in the old friendly spirit and faith, you tell me you have a juvenile book nearly ready, and ask if it shall be sent for publication. I reply, please send it at once; and then comes your note of the 11th inst., with this passage in it: ‘I cannot see how it will be for my interest that you should publish any more of my books. Unhappily, it is not necessary that I should give any explanation, since the reason, if it do not exist to your own knowledge, and by your own arrangement, does not exist at all.’ Now there must have been something in my note to you (to which this note of February 11th is a reply) which has offended you; else why this sudden change from the sentiments in your long and friendly letter to those of the unhappy note of February 11th? Now, pray let us understand each other; and in all kindness, I ask you to tell me the ground of your sudden dissatisfaction.
“Very sincerely yours,
“R. S. Hunt.”
Mr. Hunt's ignorance in face of my letters, his absolute inability to conjecture in what direction the trouble lay, his misgiving that some unremembered sentence in his letter had offended me, seemed to me not a little remarkable. I wrote again.
M. N. TO MR. HUNT.
“My dear Mr. Hunt:—
“It is an unpleasant story to tell, but since you desire it I will repeat it.
“You recollect the letter I wrote you some time last December, and the question I asked you in it. The ‘long and friendly letter,’ of which you speak, told you of my waiting, and of my writing to Mr. Jackson. Mr. Jackson's letter confirmed the statement of the Segregationalissuemost. He said, ‘There is a custom of the trade which obtains for the first venture of an author unknown to fame, to receive ten per cent. on the retail price of the books after the first thousand copies are sold.... As to the price per volume of M. N.'s works, I should think twenty to twenty-five cents per volume would be the fair copyright. Sometimes a moderate copyright makes larger sales by enabling the publishers to give larger discounts to the trade,’ etc., etc. I still supposed there was some good reason for my receiving a lower rate than any he mentioned, and in my long letter I tried to make clear to you the point which I wished settled. In your reply, you said, by E——, ‘Do you wonder, matters having been many times explained, that he thought they must sooner or later explain themselves through your memory? We forget how, in a retired life, things work in the mind,’ etc., etc. My memory is not wont to play me false; and so far from matters having been many times explained, they have not been explained at all. I have never so much as sought any explanation till now. Never but once has the subject been referred to between us. That was years ago, soon after the publication of ‘City Lights,’ and while prices were as yet unfixed. You then said, of your own accord, that owing to fluctuation of prices and general uncertainties, you were making arrangements with your authors to pay them fifteen cents a volume instead of a percentage. To this I readily assented. All that you said did not take five minutes, and all that I said did not amount to five words. I had a great deal more faith in your honorable intentions toward me than I had in my literary power to serve you. I had far more anxiety lest I should make you lose money, than I had lest you should make me lose it.