I was glad to get a note from you this morning & to learn that you were well, but I am surprised & sorry that you are not sooner coming to New York.

Waring has paid me (nearly) 2 quarters rent—$400 (350)—part of which I have paid out in settlement of John’s debts, & the remainder I have been obliged to use myself. Precisely how much I can’t at once tell. I have had too much on my mind & been too absorbingly occupied to keep systematic accounts; I only know that I make head against my debts very slowly. Besides this to Mary, I am just $300 short, to-day, when, my month’s salary coming due, I shall reduce it somewhat. I have had to use every energy & expedient to first obtain, then to maintain & advance, my present position, and whatever waste my course may have occasioned, it certainly has not amounted to $500, which is the increase in my annual salary dating from to-day, which it has obtained.

My circumstances are peculiar. I have, in fact, started in a new business, & a most important one, not only without capital, but badly hampered with debt. To have my time & mind for my business, I have had to constantly throw back old debts by making new ones. And I must continue to do so. The plan of the park, which I have decided to present, will cost some hundred dollars. It is certainly worth while for me to go into the competition, the reward of success being so large. Yet the chances are much against succeeding, there being 50 competitors.

While attending to the park & the plan, I have also if possible to complete my book for publication, the labor already expended in it being too much to let slide. Unquestionably I am undertaking too much . . . either one of the three enterprises being enough for all my talents and strength—but I don’t see from which I can recede, don’t see how I can lie closer to the wind. I was wrecked by Dix, Edwards & Co. & must weather it through to fair weather under jury-masts the best way I can.

I am extremely pained by what you say of Shaw. I can not understand what view you take of it. Surely when Shaw is liable to become, by a mere[116] quibble, legally held for 50 to 100 thousand dollars of debts, for which I am otherwise to be responsible, you could not think of taking advantage of this quibble also, to get these small sums from him. I have strenuously endeavored to dismiss the whole thing from my mind, as long as possible, but as it is, I constantly feel the weight of humiliation which the disgraceful, infamous position taken by the creditors places upon anyone who has had to do with the affair. Shaw will never pay a copper, unless under the imperative pressure of the last resort in law. So he said to me. My own opinion is that the creditors will yield. A certain amount of carelessness there was in his proceeding, & for this some penalty may be justly claimed by them. Mr. Emerson has your interest in hand. I have heard nothing from him for several months, & am extremely obliged to him for his silence. The very name of Edwards makes me sick.

Waring says he can pay nothing on the last quarter till hay is sold. He has Jack, in good order for you—and would like to sell you an extremely comfortable light carriage at a very low price. He was down on Sunday, & reports Mary well—children somewhat ailing.

Your letter was rightly directed—Yorkville. My office is in the “Wagstaff House,” an old farmhouse on the park—on V Avenue, opposite 79th St., which is a graded, paved, sidewalked & lighted street, from 3d Avenue cars to the door.

Storm & no work today.