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 write for magazines and papers, and publishers