I have taken time for deliberation and conference before replying to your note of 4th inst. I cannot see that it places the matter in any new light. We do not complain, as you seem to assume, of what you have done. Please dismiss that idea from your mind. The question may be considered to be how you can best get what you want? Upon that question we think that our familiarity with the required operations makes our judgment better than yours.

Practically your mind was long since made up as to certain particulars of your plan. We have told you that it was so in our opinion before you fully realized the facts of the topography. But having pointed these out to you your mind has remained the same. You may not have reflected that these particulars were controlling particulars of the plan as a whole but there can be no doubt that they were. It follows that what you have wanted is not counsel in framing a plan but help to find how the subordinate elements of a plan can be made to gear in satisfactorily with controlling elements that have been determined with no consideration of the problem thus afterwards to be dealt with. There are men whose common business it is to take up affairs of this class at just the point at which you want this taken up. But that has never been our business; we have always declined it and if we should depart from our rule in this case we are less likely to accomplish results [609]that would be satisfactory to you than others would be who are less tied by habit than we are to guarded and methodical processes of design.

This being our opinion, the question is whether you cannot think it right that we should, in a perfectly respectful and friendly spirit, ask to be excused from taking up your work?

Faithfully Yours,