My dear friend, your
offers of help, and those of my other British friends, I think I fully
appreciate, in the right spirit, welcome and acceptive--leaving the
matter altogether in your and their hands, and to your and their
convenience, discretion, leisure, and nicety. Though poor now, even to
penury, I have not so far been deprived of any physical thing I need
or wish whatever, and I feel confident I shall not in the future.
During my employment of seven years or more in Washington after the
war (1865-'72) I regularly saved part of my wages: and, though the sum
has now become about exhausted by my expenses of the last three years,
there are already beginning at present welcome dribbles hitherward
from the sales of my new edition, which I just job and sell, myself,
(all through this illness, my book-agents for three years in New York
successively, badly cheated me,) and shall continue to dispose of the
books myself. And that is the way I should prefer to glean my support.
In that way I cheerfully accept all the aid my friends find it
convenient to proffer.
To repeat a little, and without undertaking details, understand, dear
friend, for yourself and all, that I heartily and most affectionately
thank my British friends, and that I accept their sympathetic
generosity in the same spirit in which I believe (nay, know) it is
offer'd--that though poor I am not in want--that I maintain good heart
and cheer; and that by far the most satisfaction to me (and I think
it can be done, and believe it will be) will be to live, as long as
possible, on the sales, by myself, of my own works, and perhaps, if
practicable, by further writings for the press.
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