“Why do you hop about so when you attempt an epistle? I can't find the place. Now you are on the right side of a sheet, and, presto! I can't tell next where you are. A reader of your letters ought to stand on his head half the time. Page two is nowhere to be found, without twisting the spinal apparatus fearfully. Why don't you have a plan and stick to it? Or are you a law unto yourself? (See Hebrews).
“Let me tell you what I would like to do: Print in the Magazine several of the articles in your proposed volume, postponing the publication in book form for the present. ‘Moving,’ and ‘Friends and Friendship,’ I certainly wish for the Magazine.... Your book will keep, won't it? Meantime the papers, as printed in the ‘Adriatic,’ will not badly advertise the coming volume. Do you agree with me?...
“Your ‘My Garden,’ is a hit number one. Crowds of inquiries for the author's name beseech me, but I cry ‘mum’ to the myriads.”
M. N. TO MR. HUNT, MAY 1, 1762.
“Can't you read figures, dear? Don't you know a five when you see it? Aren't you able to tell a two from a four unless they are labelled? I fondly believed you were, but as indications point the other way, I will have everything in a right line hereafter, so that I shall just have to drop you into the groove at the beginning and you will spin along of yourself to the end. I am your serf and slave—till I get the upper hands of you, which I shall one day—I always do, sooner or later. Don't be frightened, though. I shall roar you as gently as a sucking-dove. And please remember that Hebrews is not Romans—or, as one cannot remember what he never knew, please be informed. Aren't you glad you have somebody who can always set you right?
“There is one thing about my letters though;—when you do find the place you know where you are. Yours I don't. Now what do you mean? Do you mean that my book is not good enough to publish? If you do, why don't you say so?
“When I was in Congress anything that was indefinitely postponed was as good as lost. I wish you would say, straight as an arrow, just what you mean. You need not be afraid of wounding my feelings. I have boxed them up in ice and sawdust and set them on the top shelf till such time as my fortunes shall permit me to indulge in such luxuries. I am rhinocerine and pachydermatous. Lay on Macbeth, or Duff, or whoever you are.
“You see it is absurd for you to talk about postponing the publication of a general kind of book if it is worth publicating at all. If it were what I want it to be, you would rectangle it up in ten minutes and have it out. If it is not what I want it to be, I don't want it published at all. If it is only so-so, pay-the-way-y, very good, I will have none of it. I want it to be triumphantly good. I don't want any drawn battle. I want an unconditional surrender, with fort, guns, and ammunition. If I can't have that I don't want anything. Now can I have that? You tell me. I know you know. I have been flattered to death all my life.... If the book is coarse, and violent, and insipid, and diffuse, and superficial, and egotistical, and worthless, say so. That is just what I am afraid it is, and it keeps me awake nights.
“It occurs to me that possibly you may have so much on your hands that you cannot publish it. I don't believe that, though. People can always find time to do what they will to do,—any way I can, and I am a female Atlas. But if it were so, and you would tell me that you thought the book was good, I would get somebody else to publish it. I should not like to do it to be sure. I have set my heart on your publishing my first book. You see, as Mrs. Browning says, ‘I love high though I live low.’ You know if you aim at the sun you won't probably hit it, but you will hit higher than you would if you made your target out of a scrub oak. I don't want to go into the world through the back door. I want to go in, sir, by the main entrance! with drums beating and colors flying! with body-guard on each side, and carriages drawn up in line! That means you—Brummell & Hunt is the triumphal arch and the Seventh Regiment! But you see I am tired to death and disgust of waiting. It is three years now since I took to writing in good earnest, and all this while I have been burrowing under ground. It is almost two years since I sent ‘My Garden’ to the ‘A. M.’ Two years apiece for the other two things will be four years, and by that time I shall be a coral reef, with all the pulp of my soul dried up, and nothing left but the dead shell. You understand I am not impatient of preparation. I am not only willing but eager to work. If I thought I could be more worthy by waiting; if I thought crudeness would mellow, I would wait; but the book is done. It is not a question of improving it, but to be or not to be.
“It would be a great disappointment, and I am sure a positive loss to me, not to have you publish the book if it is fit to publish. You would give me a prestige which I assure you I have sense enough to value. And yet will not the book, if it is good, make its own way, even if it should be born in a garret? You see I look at this from my standing-point only, for you of course are too well established to be disgraced by my failure or illustrated by my success. I am the only one affected, don't you see? If I fail it will nerve me. If I succeed it will give me a point of support. You understand, by success I don't mean that I desire to make a sensation. The public, whose countenance I court, would be comprised in a hundred men and women. If I should secure their suffrage, the rest of the world might go whistle. If the hundred put me on the pedestal, the ten millions cannot pull me down, for it is quality and not quantity that leads in this world, no matter what the world thinks.