“I cannot, at present, give your proposal [I believe I said proposition, but proposal must be the right word] sufficient consideration to reply to it, but I will do so as soon as possible. Meanwhile, may I ask you to send me my accounts for the last six months? I suppose they can be made up independently of the question at issue between us.
“I most emphatically agree with you in the opinion that no occasion for arbitration need ever have arisen.”
M. N. TO MR. DANE, SEPTEMBER 17.
“I thought I had pronounced my valedictory, but coming home after a few day's absence, I find the following note from B. & H. [then follows a copy of their last letter.]
“Now, this is a move which I do not understand. Why should they have declined so decidedly my proposal, and after they had received my note, why should they up and make another which, for aught I see, amounts to the same thing? I am inclined to accept the proposal, though I don't see why they should not have accepted mine. Would not Mr. Rogers be a good man?
“Isn't it vexing to have Monsieur Tonson come again?”
MR. DANE TO M. N., SEPTEMBER 21.
“‘God moves in a mysterious way,’ etc. B. & H.'s proposition does not much surprise me, though it is an entire change of base, not to say baseness. They now propose exactly what I wanted at first, a reference to some fair man; and had I made a list of a half-dozen for them to choose from, Mr. Rogers would probably have been one of them. He is quite deaf, but transacts business, and it is for him to say whether he is fit to hear the matter. Of course you are at liberty to name another or others. I have great confidence that any man of such a character will do what he thinks is just....
“Now let me say this is getting to be a serious matter; and though you may doubtless look on it as very plain, you may be much embarrassed before you are through.
“I do not see how you can decline their offer, which is precisely your own, if you took the formality out as I suggested. I doubt now whether B. & H. will not find some way to avoid a hearing. I think you had better accept their offer, but with limitations that shall hold them somewhere. In any reference of this sort, it will be understood that you may have counsel and witnesses, unless the idea is excluded by agreement....