l of money into your hands in
return for judgment, expedition, and zeal."

On March 28, 1862, he wrote, "You are advertised with me this week in
the 'Saturday' and 'London' Reviews. Next week you will be in the
'Athenaeum,' 'Times,' 'Post,' and other dailies. The cross-column
advertisements in 'Athenaeum' cost thirty shillings, 'Literary Gazette'
fifteen shillings, and so on. You will see at once this could not have
been done except by junction. I propose to bind in maroon cloth, like
'The Cloister:' it looks very handsome. I congratulate you on being a
publicist. Political disturbances are bad for books, but journals thrive
on them. Do not give up the search for scrap-books, especially
classified ones."

He wrote me on April 2, 1862, "This will probably reach you before my
great original drama 'It is Never Too Late to Mend,' which has gone by a
slower conveyance. When you receive, please take it to Miss Kean" (Laura
Keene), "and with it the enclosed page. You will tell her that, as this
is by far the most important drama I have ever written, and entirely
original, I wish her to have the refusal, and, if she will not do it
herself, I hope she will advise you how to place it. Here in England we
are at the dead-lock. The provincial theatres and the second-class
theatres are pestering me daily for it. But I will not allow it to be
produced except at a first-class theatre. I have wrested it by four
actions in law and equity from the hands of pirates, and now they shall
smart for pirating me. At the present time, therefore, any American
manager who may have the sense and honesty to treat with me will be
quite secure from the competition of English copies. I have licked old
Conquest, and the lawyers are now fighting tooth and nail over the
costs. The judges gave me one hundred and sixty pounds damages, but, as
I lost the demurrer with costs, the balance will doubtless be small.
But, if the pecuniary result is small, the victory over the pirates and
the venal part of the press is great."

He wrote on May 30, 1862, "As for writing a short story on the spur, it
is a thing I never could do in my life. My success in literature is
owing to my throwing my whole soul into the one thing I am doing. And at
present I am over head and ears in the story for Dickens" ("Very Hard
Cash"). "Write to me often. The grand mistake of friends at a distance
is not corresponding frequently enough. Thus the threads of business are
broken, as well