I am glad to hear that you are so near to the end of your labors, and that the work is to be published by the ever victorious firm of Mark Twain. If I have been able to render 62 you the smallest service I am glad, and you are heartily welcome.
Very truly yours,
James Parton.
Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 28, 1889.
Dear Sir: Your solid volume reached me several days ago, and some time after, your letter of Dec. 20. I have now read the work pretty carefully, and shall no doubt often return to it. Considering the restraints you were under, as nephew and as Republican, you have executed your task well and given to the world the most pathetic of the tragedies resulting from the system of spoils. Never again, until that blighting curse of free institutions is destroyed, will a man of Roscoe Conkling’s genius, pride and purity remain long in the public service, if ever he enters it. He was the last of the Romans. My great regret is that he did not consecrate his whole existence to the reform of the civil service. I have such an acute sense of the shame, the cruelty and the childish folly of the present system that I sometimes feel as if we ought to stop all our other work and enter upon a universal crusade against it.
You must not expect the public to remain satisfied with the omissions and suppressions of your book. Sooner or later, somebody will supply them, and you might just as well have told the whole story.
I am glad to hear of the success of the book with the public.
Very truly yours,
James Parton.