Elmira, N.Y. 17th
My Dear Stoddard:
Now what the hell should I get mad about? Am I become an ass in mine old age? Don’t talk such nonsense. I had a curiosity to know whose album it was—not a solitary damn did I care else about the matter.
Don’t do anything in the matter of the Chicago publication—lose neither your temper nor your sleep. If the poems are poor, they will die & leave no sign—then you are not hurt; if they are superb they will give you fame & honor, & that will ma cause the person who wrote them to feel very sick indeed.
Yes, the new book probably has merit concealed about it, somewhere, inasmuch as it has already sold 50,000 copies——which is 7,000 more than any previous book of mine achieved in the same length of time.
As to Mrs. Stowe, you’ve spoken three days too late, for we are now gone from Hartford for the summer, & she has gone off touring up around Maine somewhere—started same day we did.
Lord, but I would like to see San Francisco once more!
Yrs Ever
Mark.
Source text(s):Previous publication:Chicago Book Auction catalog, 25 January 1933, no. 30, lot 60, partial publication; MicroPUL, reel 1.
Provenance:Donated in about 1960 by the family of businessman and collector George N. Meissner (1872–1960).
