It is mighty good news you send. Evidently your skies are brightening. And it is time; for you have had black weather long enough. We congratulate you with all our hearts.

We have been to Fredonia; we have finished our visit here in the valley with Mother Langdon; todayⒶemendation we depart with bag- Ⓐemendation & baggage to the serene hill-top. Consequently this is a busy day. Livy is viewing designs & instructing the artist who is making ready to fresco the Hartford house, Rosa is packing trunks, & I am bracing myself for the serious work of answering some thirty letters. During some hours, now, I shall be steadily declining—I always decline, & keep on declining, on these correspondence-clearing occasions.

1. I have to decline to lecture; & to furnish autographic “sentiments;” & to write articles for periodicals; & to read & give a “candid opinion” upon manuscriptsⒶemendation submitted by strangers—& so on, & so on. PRIVATEⒶemendation. This goes on, week in & week out, & is almighty irksome & monotonous. I went to Europe mainly to get rid of my inane, brain-softening letter-answering.

2.

Think of having to say the same things over & over & over again, every week. Tiresome? That is the word. It does not anger me, it only makes me low-spirited. These letters are compliments, consequently one cannot disrespect them. But constantly answering the very same questions in the very same way is another form of climbing a treadmill—you seem to be nearing the top, but you’re not. In the first two weeks after my arrival in America, I was requested by five strangers, living in different parts of the country, to read & judge their MS books & “use my influence” to get publishers for them. These MS, combined, aggregated 11,000 pages. If I had laid aside everything else, it would have taken me three steady weeks to read them. It is no trouble to say No, to this request—the difficulty is to say it in such a way as not to hurt. You see it is hard to seem gentle when you are not, but only ought to be. Apprentice-lawyers, doctors & preachers have to pay for their training: ours is the only reputable trade where the apprentice impudently demands compliments & wages right in the start. No ink is black enough to paint my con Ⓐemendation detestation of these devils. Would one of them venture to ask wages as brakeman of a freight-train, without previous training? The stupidest of them would see the absurdity of that, but he sees no absurdity in bringing his ponderous armament of ignorance & leather-headedness to bear upon “literature” & requiring wages for it.

But I must switch off—I see this subject stretching out before me in a sort of endless way. It is matter for a ream of paper—not a letter-sheet. I must not get interested in it & so neglect to answer & decline the 30 propositions heretofore referred to.

You must stop over here, either going or coming—make up your mind to that. From present appearances we shall still be on the hill the middle of October; & mind you bring Mollie along—I have a powerful desire to see her. I’ll tell you about the book when you come, if we can’t find anything interesting to talk about. In effect, the book is finished—& with the last pen-stroke on a book, my interest in it totally & permanently dies.

Charley’s sketch is pretty good; but I think there is something more of promise in it than performance. I judge he has the gift, & that training will bring success—nothing but steadfast & pains-taking training ought to, in anybody’s case—else where would be the justice to them that do train? Training is raising him on the “World” (I was mighty glad to hear that) of his advancement) & nothing but training could have accomplished that. Talent is useless without training, thank God—as Anna Dickinson may yet discover before she gets done trying to skip to the top-round of tragedy at a bound.

But I mustn’t go on gossiping with you now—wait till you come, & then we will unbudget. With a power of love from all of us to the Fairbankses,