Hartford, Nov. 11, 1881.
John W. Sanborn, Esq:
Dear Sir:
I am very much obliged to you for that book, [&] I want to thank you for making it; for I see that you feel about these things just as I do. I have glanced at one page only, thus far, (Page 11), but the way you sail into the Adjective there, warms my heart. I have always wished that somebody would expose the adjective, for it certainly richly deserves it. It is just as you say: the Adjective is a (n) regular, irregular, numeral, cardinal, ordinal, distributive, indeclinable, bloody nuisance “from——.” Yes, that is just where it is from; you couldn’t have said a truer thing; [&] it is where it will go to, one of these days, if my supplications are answered.
(You shouldn’t say “(n)”——half the people wont understand it; say it right out plain, “d—n”). It will gain you millions of friends. Yes, [&] I immensely like your idea of bunching all those things together under “singular” [&] “plural,” [&] cursing them in body, [&] comprehensively—three eloquent dashes to each lot. In a new edition, if you should want any help, in the way of harsh names [&] vicious epithets, you just leave the Adjective to me—leave it to me with the utmost confidence. I can pour out as much as ten pages of Billingsgate on it without going dry. I will give it such another dressing down that it will be ashamed to show its face in literature again for a hundred years.
Truly yours,
M. T.
Textual Commentary
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