“Your letter of March 31 is before me. If you will be so good as to refer to my letter to which yours is a reply, I think you will find a declaration to the effect that my wish to leave the magazine was not founded on any dissatisfaction connected with it. I certainly meant to guard against the possibility of any such supposition on your part. That I failed to do so, I must beg you to attribute to inability and not to disinclination or indifference.
“Nor did your previous letter give me the faintest shadow of offense. I was never otherwise than gratified whenever you asked me to write. When you say ‘your contributions, which were originally expected to be monthly or when desired,’ do you mean to intimate that there was an agreement between us to that effect? If so, permit me to say that such an agreement never existed. Mr. Hunt came to me in Zoar with a request for service and an offer of salary, which I felt obliged to refuse. He then offered me $500 per year for the use of my name as one of the editors and for such service as I chose to give the magazine. He said they should be glad to have me write every month, but I should be left absolutely free not to write at all. I thought the sum altogether too great for what I should be able to do; and it was with the utmost reluctance, and only after much urgency,—and because it was Mr. Hunt who urged it,—that I consented to the arrangement. I made no promises, but I determined in my own mind that I would send something every month; and I satisfied my editorial conscience by carefully reading every number as it came out, and noting its points, as you perhaps have sometimes found to your sorrow, or at least fatigue. I did this for a long time. Every gap in the earlier numbers is owing to a story rejected or delayed by you, not to any failure on my part to send you a story. When I found that a paper would lie two or three months in your hands, I thought it was because you had so much better things to print, and I considered that I was doing you a kindness by not sending so frequently; and therefore, whenever you did ask me to write, I took it as a compliment, and was always pleased. You cannot speak more disparagingly than I think of my actual services on the ‘Buddhist,’ but I could wish that your opinion had found an earlier expression. Permit me distinctly to say that, until the reception of your last letter, my relations towards you in connection with the magazine were always agreeable; while my original scruples regarding the money value of such an editorial arrangement were long ago set at rest in the most conclusive manner by other publishers.
“I do wish you to understand that I desire my relations with the magazine shall cease at the earliest possible moment.
“That part of your letter which refers to my reasons for breaking my connection with your house, it is impossible for me to characterize, and equally impossible for me to reply to.”
MR. BRUMMELL TO M. N., APRIL 4.
“I have your letter of the 1st instant, and I thank you for it.
“May I correct the slight misunderstanding of my position which I fancy I detect in your reply, and for which I am doubtless responsible by reason of some ineffectiveness in my way of ‘putting things.’
“My notion was, that if your relation with the ‘B.’ had been agreeable, and your work satisfactorily paid, I should be sorry to lose you as helper and adviser, because you felt that you could publish elsewhere and otherwise to better advantage. Pray consider that you and I have only been in communication in regard to this magazine; of the precise manner and nature of your dealing with our senior partner in other matters, I, of course, can know nothing. I can only receive the results.
“I had understood, on taking up the plan prepared for the ‘B.,’ that its ostensible editors were to be regular contributors,—supplying for its pages articles whenever wanted, even as often as monthly.
“If I misapprehended the agreement with yourself, you must excuse me, and acquit me of intentionally overstraining it. I did use your articles slowly, for the reason, on the one hand, that I seldom had by me more than one at a time, and could not exactly count upon the receipt of another; and, on the other hand, because I knew you to be busy on other things, and hesitated to take from you time which you might prefer to use differently, thinking that when you were moved to write, you would do so.