editorial office of the atlantic monthly. the riverside press, cambridge, mass.
Oct. 8, 1876.
My dear Clemens:
I think with you that the notion of the Blindfold Novelettes oughtn’t to be dropped. The difficulty is to get people to write them. You would do it and so would I, but Aldrich is doubtful. Do you think Warner would do one? If I could scrape up four or five authors, I’d be all right. If you’ll simplify the skeleton of the story, and send me your new plot, I’ll try again. I know the thing would be a great card for the magazine, and the owners are crazy over it.
—I wrote you that I would leg like a centipede for C. W. Stoddard, whose virtue-ward-leaning frailties I love and admire. But it would be well to get David Gray to make interest with Tilden, wouldn’t [it], too? Nobody knows what is going to happen. The only certainty is that the Life of Hayes hasn’t sold 2000 copies. There’s success for you. It makes me despair of the Republic, I can tell you. And the bills continue ‸to come‸ in with unabated fierceness.
—Mrs. Howells and I in our own political eclipse, still rejoice in your effulgence. Your speech was civil service reform in a nutshell. You are the only Republican orator quoted without distinction of party by all the newspapers, and I wish you could have gone largely into the canvass. Lowell was delighted with your hit at plumbers.
—In a few days I’ll send you the proof of your too-small contribution for December. Could n’t you let me have something for January?
rend="indentcompclose">Yours ever
W. D. Howells.
