welcome to me. I will not promise
again until I do it. I received a note last week forwarded by
Mr. Hume from New York, and instantly replied to greet the good
messenger to our Babylonian city, and sent him letters to a few
friends of mine there. But my brother writes me that he had left
New York for Washington when he went to seek him at his lodgings.
I hope he will come northward presently, and let us see his face.

_22 April._--Last evening came true the promised account drawn up
by Munroe's clerk, Chapman. I have studied it with more zeal
than success. An account seems an ingenious way of burying
facts: it asks wit equal to his who hid them to find them. I am
far as yet from being master of this statement, yet, as I have
promised it so long, I will send it now, and study a copy of it
at my leisure. It is intended to begin where the last account I
sent you, viz. of _French Revolution,_ ended, with a balance of
$9.53 in your favor.... I send you also a paper which Munroe drew
up a long time ago by way of satisfying me that, so far as the
first and second volumes [of the _Miscellanies_] were concerned,
the result had accorded with the promise that you should have
$1,000 profit from the edition. We prosper marvelously on paper,
but the realized benefit loiters. Will you now set some friend
of yours in Fraser's shop at work on this paper, and see if this
statement is true and transparent. I trust the Munroe firm,--
chiefly Nichols, the clerical partner,--and yet it is a duty to
understand one's own affair. When I ask, at each six months'
reckoning, why we should always be in debt to them, they still
remind me of new and newer printing, and promise correspondent
profits at last. By sending you this account I make it entirely
an affair between you and them. You will have all the facts
which any of us know. I am only concerned as having advanced the
sums which are charged in the account for the payment of paper
and printing, and which promise to liquidate themselves soon, for
Munroe declares he shall have $550 to pay me in a few days. For
the benefit of all parties bid your clerk sift them. One word
more and I have done with this matter, which shall not be weary
if it comes to good,--the account of the London five hundred
_French Revolution_ is not yet six months old, and so does not
come in. Neither does that of the second edition of the first
and second volumes of the _Miscellanies,_ for the same reas