I conclude to send the Hot Springs papers to you. The only essential point needing revision you will find on p. 5th where on the 1st line reference is made to words in brackets [—] in the passage quoted just afterwards. There is no word in bracket and I don’t know whether the words intended to be bracketed, have, (upon second thought) been omitted, or whether the brackets have been, by accident. You will have to look at Stevens’s letter to make sure, and make correction. My impression is that you only need to draw a pen through the words “and inserting others in brackets.” You may think best to change the date.

But I don’t feel satisfied to have the letter go until you and Eliot have read it, as I am sure that you had not when you sent it because there were two or three slips that you would not have left uncorrected if you had. Obviously, you do not attach the same importance to it that I do. You do not realize what the consequences of an injudicious letter might be if the Secretary—an old Southern fire-eater—should happen to be disposed to make us trouble, or if Stevens, or the speculators whose interests he consults, should get the Senator from Arkansas to attack us, or attack the Secy of the Interior. It is quite possible that we shall presently be summoned to appear before a strongly prejudiced, ignorant and wrong-headed committee of Congress, the chairman of which is cousin on the one side of the principal inn-keeper and land speculator of Hot Springs and on the other of Mr Stevens’s uncle’s wife. It is quite possible that some reporter or editor may find it convenient to use the occasion for making a sensation by a garbled statement of some of Stevens’s evidence adapted, when spread abroad, not only to do us a great business injury but to establish a prejudice against our profession as a trade of swindling quacks. This paper should serve as a caution against such attacks, or, if they are made, mere reference to it should be sufficient to answer them.

Then, it is your paper, not mine. Finally I recognize that, having been driven by such proceedings close to the edge—possibly a little over the edge—of lunacy, by false rumors, misstatements and cunningly contrived, sensational special proceedings under circumstances less favorable to these practices, in the past, my judgment in the matter may not be altogether sound and so, I will not take the responsibility of writing for the firm unless you are willing to give more thought to it than I think you have. At any rate you & Eliot must cautiously assume intelligent responsibility clearly for the statements of facts as to which you are better informed than I am. Take that, for example, of Eliot’s personal experience with Stevens.

It is to be mentioned among the perversities of fate that I suppose that I left a memorandum intended to guard specifically against a repetition of the [720]disrespect to the Honorable Secretary of the Interior which appears at the head of each type written page in the inscription “Smith 5”; left it for Miss Gould, and that again I gave another similar memorandum to Mr McNamee type written here, in spite of which, each copy repeats the infelicity. I think that then it should be erased or that “Secy” should be inserted before Smith. Or, if you see occasion for any other corrections, another complete copy shd be written.

I send three copies. One I have intended to be sent to the Secretary; another (with a brief note, stating that it is a copy of one sent the Secy) to Stevens; the third for our files.

I made the first reconnaissance of the proposed new line for the Arboretum, yesterday; out all day in the saddle and am feeling—well, somewhat indolent, I will say, in consequence.

I have received the funeral coat—not the leather jacket—thank you.

Weather fine for our operations again today. I take your advice as far as prudent. Expect to go to Atlanta about next Wednesday—not before. I wait to hear further from you before determining about Louisville. I would like to get off from a Northwestern tour, but it seems to me that I ought not. I don’t think that we can afford not to review all our public works before winter. I feel that I ought to go to Kansas C. or should if I did not feel that it would be rather an excessive risk of life for me at this season.

I still feel the elevation here acting apparently on the heart, forcing excessive action, but think I shall worry through without a break-down as always before.

Affcty