Your difficulty will be to present fairly his less favorable side; but upon this depends all the value, and much of the interest of the work.
My great rules are:
1, To know the subject thoroughly myself; 2, to index fully all the knowledge in existence relating to it; 3, to determine beforehand where I will be brief, where expand, and how much space I can afford to each part; 4, to work slowly and finish as I go; 5, to avoid eulogy and apology and let the facts have their natural weight; 6, to hold back nothing which the reader has a right to know.
I have generally had the great advantage of loving my subjects warmly, and I do not believe we can do justice to any human creature unless we love him. A true love enlightens, but not blinds, as we often see in the case of mothers who love their children better, 60 and also know them better, than anybody else ever does.
With regard to New York, I am always going there, but never go; still, I may have to go soon, and I will go anyway if I can do anything important or valuable in the way you suggest—but not “professionally,” except as an old soldier helps a recruit.
Very truly yours,
James Parton.
Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 24, 1888.
Dear Sir: I have examined with much interest and pleasure your work upon Mexico, with a title so extravagantly modest as almost to efface the author. Let us accept our fate. It is our destiny to live in an age when all human distinctions are abolished, or about to be abolished, except the advertiser and his victim. Your work appears to me to be quite a model, and I wish I were going to be a tourist in Mexico that I might have the advantage of using it.