“Now [here follow questions.]
“You say now I should propose a reference. Are you willing I should write to B. & H., and say that you have placed with me (or with R. and me, for we are partners in all law business, and have no separate names as lawyers) your claim for arrearages, with instructions to enforce them by law? If you are, I want the premier's opinion of the matter, and if we think you have a case, we will proceed. Now that you, after referring Mr. H. to me as your friend, and what has transpired under that arrangement, have had a personal interview with him, which you announce to your friends as a pacification, and have opened a new correspondence with him, proposing a reference, there is embarrassment all around. My office of friend or mediator, they will say, is finished. They cannot be expected to deal with you and me both. I think if they do not notice your proposition, we should make no further move, unless it is to be followed by legal proceedings, if necessary. There is no force or fitness in a proposition from me, unless we have something besides wooden guns behind it.
“Now, I wish you would come and see me. I don't eat raw chickens, so I can't go there. Here, there are good victuals.... As Mrs.——'s case bears on yours, it concerns me no further, except to save you from conspicuous folly in your attempts to help. Mrs.—— has Mr. Edwards for her friend, adviser, and legal counsellor, and although she is worrying his life out by constantly twitting him of his folly, in the contract he made as administrator, she wants no other. He is only skin and bone, poor man, and would die gladly, except for fear of meeting —— in some place where suicide is impossible, and “twelve cents a volume” will sound forever in his ears.
“If B. & H. do not reply to your last letter, you may depend upon it that nothing but legal suasion will move them. This is not cross, though it seems so. I am your very amiable.”
FROM B. & H. TO M. N., SEPTEMBER 8.
“Your letter of 29th ult., addressed to our Mr. Hunt, was duly received, and we now beg to reply on his behalf and that of the firm.
“In your letter you assume that we have but one set of terms with the various authors whose works we publish. In this you are in error. What we pay to any individual author is a matter quite between him—or her—and ourselves, and it is not our custom to make one author the criterion for another. Many elements enter into the case that would make a uniform rate impracticable. Independently of other considerations, the varying cost of manufacture caused by different styles of publication, would alone preclude such an arrangement. We must, therefore, decline to admit such an argument into the case.
“We have given our reasons in justification of our course towards you in full, and we see no occasion for repeating them here. As they were unsatisfactory to you, we offered, on May 29 last, in a letter to your attorney, Mr. Nathan Dane, to relinquish, at a fair price, the plates and stock to any publisher whom you might prefer. This offer we now respectfully renew.
“Touching arbitration, we may say that at an earlier stage of the proceedings we should have been willing to submit the matter to that test. At present, however, we do not wish to do so.”
M. N. TO MR. DANE, SEPTEMBER 11.