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24th of that year he enclosed a bill of exchange on
Rothschild, and expressed the hope that the house would not stop before paying it. He adds:
... We are over the agony here, and have passed into a sort of coma or stupor so far as money affairs are concerned.
There is nothing doing but gambling in stocks, for which the stock of money which has no industrial or commercial employment affords facilities.
For my part I live in the stagnation.
Last year I had eight thousand dollars income.
Now I have my salary of forty dollars a week, and no great hopes of more.
Of the first volume of the Cyclopaedia we are printing an edition of one thousand instead of ten thousand, which we should have done.
It promises well, however, for ultimate profit, and I believe will be recognized as a good book by the critics.
The Household Book of Poetry, which should have paid me one thousand dollars in January, lies sound asleep in the hope of a blessed resurrection.
But we don't cry about it; that is, I and the wife and babies; but keep on having as jolly a time as ever, even without the luxuries of other days.
But we have got a good cook, and if you were only back in the second story front, there would indeed be reason to believe in a superintending Providence.
It's stupid in you, too, to be there in Paris, when we could keep you so nicely at work on the Cyclopaedia, filling up the gaps as we advance with printing.
But never mind — there will be a good time for us all somewhere.
My love to Mrs. Cranch, and to you, my dear Huntington, the same steady old affection which never showed a sign of giving out.
On April 6, 1858, in explanation of his delay in writing, he says:
... The fact is I am a pretty busy chap.
We print about seventy-five pages a week of the Cyclopaedia, which I must prepare the copy for, and then do my part in the revision of the proofs.
Then all the afternoon and evening serving
