which the cheap press has wrought in our book market, and
specially what difficulties it put in the way of our edition of
_Past and Present._ For a few weeks I believed that the letters
I had written to the principal New York and Philadelphia
booksellers, and the Preface, had succeeded in repelling the
pirates. But in the fourth or fifth week appeared a mean edition
in New York, published by one Collyer (an unknown person and
supposed to be a mask of some other bookseller), sold for twelve
and one half cents, and of this wretched copy several thousands
were sold, whilst our seventy-five cents edition went off slower.
There was no remedy, and we must be content that there was no
expense from our edition, which before September had paid all its
cost, and since that time has been earning a little, I believe.
I am not fairly entitled to an account of the book from the
publishers until the 1st of January.... I have never yet done
what I have thought this other last week seriously to do, namely,
to charge the good and faithful E.P. Clark, a man of accounts as
he is a cashier in a bank, with the total auditing and analyzing
of these accounts of yours. My hesitation has grown from the
imperfect materials which I have to offer him to make up so long
a story. But he is a good man, and, do you know it? a Carlylese
of that intensity that I have often heard he has collected a sort
of album of several volumes, containing illustrations of every
kind, historical, critical, &c., to the _Sartor._ I must go to
Boston and challenge him. Once when I asked him, he seemed
willing to assume it. No more of accounts tonight.

I send you by this ship a volume of translations from Dante, by
Doctor Parsons of Boston, a practising dentist and the son of a
dentist. It is his gift to you. Lately went Henry James to