Chapter M: N. to Mr. Dane, August 22

"Why I sent you the letters, was because I was interested in the case, and what I am interested in it is proper you should be likewise. All is, I don't want you to loom up as her advocate; but if you know the circumstances you may perhaps, in a quiet way, keep her from falling into a ditch. And so you being wise as a serpent, and I harmless as a dove, we may perhaps circumvent those wicked and unprofitable servants....

"Moreover, as you have already observed, the case does bear directly on mine. Not only do they profess themselves willing to compromise with Mrs.---- on ten per cent., but in this letter 'they say' that 'even B. now has only ten per cent.' (from which I infer that he has had more). But Mr. Hunt, in this house, told me that they did by me just as they did by B.

"Now I do not feel disposed to let the past go. They have not done by me as they have done by others. Why would it not do for you to make the proposal to them since they do not make it? I would just as soon make it, if you say so. Perhaps it would come best from me in a letter to be delivered by you. I have no sensitiveness whatever about it. I am as hard as steel towards them. They are so bungling that I could find it in my heart to be indignant....

"I do not propose to insist on ten per cent. to the extent of taking my books away from them, but I _am_ ready to propose a reference. If they agree to it, I think it would be a good plan to find out what is the custom of other publishers, Troubadours, for instance, and a few more of the leading ones.

"I will also get one or two more of B. & H.'s authors. You see I am prepared to do now what you wished me to do long ago; but do not plume yourself on that fact, for the timing of a thing may be as strong a test of wisdom as the doing of it. I must keep you in proper subjection at any cost.

"Mr. Heath, of the Ancient and Honorable, came down to see me, Tuesday, but I was away.

"Three hundred dollars for what I can do is more than five thousand for what I cannot....

"_Monday morning._ It has all come to me as clear as day what to do. You find out when the prices of the books went above $1.50. Until then, ten per cent. and fifteen cents were the same thing. In 1763, they had not gone up. Then cipher out from my accounts precisely how much is due me on all the books at ten per cent. Then send the papers to me and I will have Fritz _prove_ your figures, Fritzes being good at 'figgers.' Then _I_ will write to Mr. H., saying I have been made acquainted with Mrs.----'s affairs, and that he offers her ten per cent. or a reference, and that I wish he would make me the same offer. You shall see the letter, and you will see that it will be very wise, and I _don't_ see how he can reject, and I think he will pay the arrearage. I will tell him exactly what is due according to my thinking, and if he sees the sum all reckoned up for him, he would rather pay it than have any more fuss. Probably the reason he has not paid before is, that it was such a hard "sum" to "do." He must see that I shall be a thorn in his side as long as I live, and we, all of us, live to be eighty."