Elmira, N. Y. Sept. 19/82.
Dear Mr. MacDonald—
I’ll send you the book, with name in it, sure, & as soon as it issues from the press, which will not be before Spring. I am adding 90,000 words to it; & an uphill job it is, too, for I’m full of malaria, caught in New Orleans three months ago. Since I may choose, I will take the Back of the North Wind in return, for our children’s sake; they have read and [re-read] their own copy so many times that it looks as if it had been through the wars.
I thank you ever so much for remembering me in the agency matter, though it comes a year too late., now. Osgood, in Boston, & Chatto in London, take care of all my literary business, now, in America, England & the Continent, & I am having a delightful rest in consequence. A book of mine used to pay me nothing in England—pays me two to three thousand pounds, now. Osgood sells my occasional magazine rubbish at figures which makes me blush, they are so atrocious. I perceive, now, after all these wasted years, that an author ought always to be connected with a highwayman.
Mrs. Clemens joins me in the warmest regards to you & Mrs. MacDonald & the children.
Yours Sincerely
S. L. Clemens
I venture to enclose one of Osgood’s neat heliotypes, from a photographic negative.
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):Previous publication:
MacDonald 1924, 458, partial publication; MicroPUL, reel 2.
Emendations and textual notes:
re-read • re- | read
