Osgood says something about your projecting a play. Now I think that the play for you to write would be one entitled “Col. Mulberry Sellers in Age”(75)—with that fool of a Lafayette Hawkins (aged 50) still sticking to him & believing in him, & calling him “my lord” (S. being American earl of Durham)—& has cherished his delusion until he & his chuckleheaded household believe he is the rightful earl & that he is being shamefully treated by the house of Lords.[)] He is a “specialist” & a “scientist” in various ways; collects makes collections of pebbles & brickbats & discourses garrulously & ignorantly over them & projects original geological “theories” &c. A selfish old hog & hypocrite, surrounded by sap-headed worshipers. Ⓐemendation Has a lot of impossible inventions, which cost somebody a good deal & then blow up & cripple disinterested parties, or poison them. Let the s patent for his earldom actually arrive from England just as he is dying.

Your delicate refined people & purity of speech would make the best possible back ground for this coarse old ass. F And when you were done, I could take your MS & re-write the Colonel’s speeches & make him properly vulgar & extravagant. For this service I would require only ¾ of the pecuniary result. (How liberal, how lavish I seem to grow, these days!) And I would give let the play to Raymond, & bind him up with a contract that would give him the belly-ache every time he read it. (I made $70,000 out of that devil with the other play.)

Shall we think this over?—or drop it, as being nonsense. Madam says we shall go home about two weeks hence.