that if he has not defrauded
the government out of money, why pay, simply because the government
chooses to consider him in its debt? No: Right is right. The idea don't
suit me. Let him write the Treasury the state of the case, and tell them
he has no money. If they make his sureties pay, then I will make the
sureties whole, but I won't pay a cent of an unjust claim. You talk of
disgrace. To my mind it would be just as disgraceful to allow one's self
to be bullied into paying that which is unjust.

Ma thinks it is hard that Orion's share of the land should be swept away
just as it is right on the point (as it always has been) of becoming
valuable. Let her rest easy on that point. This letter is his ample
authority to sell my share of the land immediately and appropriate the
proceeds--giving no account to me, but repaying the amount to Ma first,
or in case of her death, to you or your heirs, whenever in the future
he shall be able to do it. Now, I want no hesitation in this matter. I
renounce my ownership from this date, for this purpose, provided it is
sold just as suddenly as he can sell it.

In the next place--Mr. Langdon is old, and is trying hard to
withdraw from business and seek repose. I will not burden him with a
purchase--but I will ask him to take full possession of a coal tract of
the land without paying a cent, simply conditioning that he shall mine
and throw the coal into market at his own cost, and pay to you and all
of you what he thinks is a fair portion of the profits accruing--you
can do as you please with the rest of the land. Therefore, send me
(to Elmira,) information about the coal deposits so framed that he can
comprehend the matter and can intelligently instruct an agent how to
find it and go to work.

Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston
audience--4,000 critics--and on the success of this matter depends my
future success in New England. But I am not distressed. Nasby is in the
same boat. Tonight decides the fate of his brand-new lecture. He
has just left my room--been reading his lecture to me--was greatly
depressed. I have convinced him that he has little to fear.

I get just about five hundred more applications to lecture than I can
possibly fill--and in the West they say "Charge all you please, but
come." I shan't go West at all. I stop lecturing the 22d of January,
sure. But I shall talk every night up to that time. They flood me
with high-priced invitations to wri