Just got your letter last night. No, dern that article, it made me cry when I read it in proof, it was so oppressively & ostentatiously poor. Skim your eye over it again & you will think as I do. If Isaac & the prophets of Baal can be doctored gently & made permissible, it will redeem the thing; but if it can’t, let’s burn all of the article except the tail-end of it & use that as an instroduction to the next article—as I suggested in my letter to you of day before yesterday. (I had this proof from Cambridge before yours came.)

Boucicault says my new play is ever so much better than Ah Sin; says the Amateur detective is a bully character, too. An actor is chawing over the play in New York, to see if the old Detective is suited to his abilities. Haven’t heard from him yet.

If you’ve got that paragraph by you yet, & if in your judgment it would be good to publish it, & if you absolutely would not mind doing it, then I think I’d like to have you do it—or else put some other words in my mouth that will be properer, & publish them. But mind, don’t think of it for a moment if it is distasteful—& doubtless it is. I value your judgment more than my own, to as to the wisdom of saying anything at all in this matter. To say nothing leaves me in an injurious position—& yet maybe I might do better to speak to the men themselves when I go to New York. This was my latest idea, & it looked wise.

We expect to leave here for home Sept. 4, reaching there the 8th—but we may be delayed a week.

I wish I knew whether the “house” will send the “advance” sheets to the “Canadian Monthly” or whether I am to do it. Do you know? It is perfectly easy for me to do it, but no need of both of us doing it.

Curious thing. I read passages from my play, & a full synopsis, to Boucicault, who was re-writing a play which he wrote & laid aside 3 or 4 years ago. (My detective is about that age, you know). Then he read a passage from his play, where a real detective does some things that are as idiotic as some of my old Wheeler’s performances. Showed me the passages, & behold, his man’s name is Wheeler! However, his Wheeler is not a prominent character, so we’ll not alter the names. My Wheeler’s name is taken from the old Jumping Frog sketch.

I am re-reading Ticknor’s diary, & am charmed with it; though I still say he refers to too many good things when he could g just as well have told them. ThinkⒶemendation of the man traveling 8 days in convoy & familiar intercourse with a band of outlaws through the mountain fastnesses of Spain—he the fourth stranger they had encountered in 3 thirty years—& compressing this priceless experience into a single colorless paragraph of his diary! They spun yarns to him this unworthy devil, too.

I wrote you a very long letter a day or two ago, but Susie Crane wanted to make a copy of it to keep, so it has not gone yet. It may go to-day, possibly.

We unite in warm regards to you & yourn.