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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 write for magazines and papers, and
publishers besiege me to write books. Can't do any of these things.
I am twenty-two thousand dollars in debt, and shall earn the money
and pay it within two years--and therefore I am not spending any money
except when it is necessary.
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