24 August 1883 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: NPV, UCCL 02825)
Pitch into Mills’s business & square it up. If he has any ground of complaint concerning the plates, satisfy him, if you have to give them to him. Treat him well, for if he is like the other Mills, he is worth it & deserves it.
If he is entitled to the deed he mentions, send that anyway; for if he is entitled to it, it is not in dispute and shouldn’t be delayed or affected by things which may be in dispute.
If that preliminary was now pending instead of past, I’d get some lawyers to put me on the stand the day before & give me a thorough ransacking. Then I should be a decent sort of a witness, next day, & not a pudding-head.
I have a telegram from Bath, Maine,—the grand jury threw out the bill, to that editor’s vast comfort. Duncan went for a criminal indictment, in that case.
over
I wrote Mills a very brief note, in which I said you would settle the matters, & do it in such a way that there could be no question as to the justice of it.
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Special Collections, NPV.
MicroPUL, reel 2.
see McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenanceclick to open letter.