That question appears to answer itself: if the Am. Pub. Co. will not give you terms on Tom Sawyer which will afford you a profit, does not that end the project?

When you send me pirate ads which are calculated to enrage me, I wish you would also send me a form for a letter to the Am. Pub. Co to fit the case. You lay me liable to make trouble under a sudden & frantic impulse when there is no occasion for it. Besides, the episode unfits me for work for a week afterward. I have lost $3000 worth of time over this pirate business, & I do not see where any good has been done, unless the erection of a quarrel with the Pub. Co can come under that head.

If you would help me get along with the Pub Co, we could doubtless manage them to our advantage; but I have no diplomacy in my own nature, & you don’t suggest any to me. Try to remember that I fly off the handle altogether too easily, & that you want to think twice before you send me irritating news.

As to the prizes, you can think that out & decide upon it much better than I can. It is not my function to help fix up arrive at conclusions in business matters. The thing should not be submitted to me except in a completed & determined form—then my function comes in: & it is merely & solely to approve or disapprove.

This is the first summer which I have lost. I haven’t a paragraph to show for my 3-months’ working-season. But there was no help for it—been in the doctor’s hands the greater part of the time.

I have foolishly gone so far with the Am Pub Co that I must now go on, if Whitford thinks it wi a winning case—which he won’t.

We shall reach our hotel the evening of Sept. 16. And thenceforward we can meet when there is t business to be discussed—it is the only good way.