Having had no more uncomfortable thing to ride me in these restless nights since John’s interview with you the other day, I have had to think over his report of what then occurred and what must have been back of it.

John may not have been able to tell me just what provocation he offered you, but I had given him no message to you and I think that I can judge what he was likely not to say well enough to be safe in assuming that you could have been driven to repeat to him the bitter protest against my courses with [499] you which you have before addressed more than once to me, by the consideration that I had made no sufficient reply to it, and that it had had no apparent effect upon me.

That I have not appeared to give it more consideration is because I did not at the time I heard it think that the circumstances were favorable to candor of debate with either of us and because on afterwards deliberately reviewing your words I was led to conclude that they were temporary expressions of feeling inconsistent with your more abiding sentiment. I have not neglected to consider them.

We are both of us invalids, both suffer from a similar form of nervous irritability, extremely provocative of impatience, and if your malady is the hardest, I am much the older man, more hardened in my habits and less tractable.

Therefore as to mere expressions of impatience and petulance we have within us much to boast of, and between ourselves I don’t think we need attempt to cast up accounts. If you do and find a balance against me, it can only be a case for forgiveness as to the little over and I ask your forgiveness.

Let us turn from these superficial matters of nerve and temper to those of continuous and deliberate conduct of life.

Taken thus by itself apart from all mere irritations of manner the charge which you make against me, I understand to be chiefly in this: That for some time past I have fallen into ways of dealing with you which imply rights on my part and obligations on yours which are wholly unwarranted, and which proper professional self-respect and regard for your professional position compels you to resist and warmly protest against as you do.

If you think that I have changed my bearing toward you intentionally, I can only deny it. If you cannot take my denial, that is the end of the matter. I cannot engage in discussions with you as to my veracity or sincerity.

If you think that I have fallen into a different habit from that of my earlier dealings with you unconsciously, I can only say that having given the question mature consideration I am satisfied that you are mistaken and that further reiteration of your conviction is not likely to change my opinion.

There is only one way in which I can account for such a conviction having taken root in your mind and I shall suggest it with no thought of insisting upon it, much less of reproaching you with it, if you think it wrong.

I put myself in your place and reflect that since the early Charles Street days there have been greater changes with you than with me.

You now have children. You are living in your own house in the country; You have your own office; you have a partner and you have undertaken and carried through important works on your own account; works which should bring you fame — and which do so, though less than you deserve.

Putting myself in your place, I don’t think that an arrangment which I should have been satisfied to make before such changes would latterly have been perfectly congenial to me. There can be no reproach then, in asking [500] you to consider whether you do not feel that something more is due to you now than in the Charles Street days and whether it is not this feeling which is at the bottom of your conviction that I have grown unjust and am trying to deal with you in a way derogatory to your professional rights?

Is this not quite as likely as that I, a much older man as I have said & more hardened in my habits should have changed in the manner you suppose?

If you recognize that this may be possible or may even partly account for the hard feeling which you feel compelled to express toward me I beg you to reflect that in the organization of the Washington work I stand in a very different position from that of a private client, the head of a private office, or the head of a public office. I have to do with it under an ambiguous, ill-defined, wholly irregular form of obligation to accomplish certain ends as best I may under certain conditions and with the use of certain means which are extremely unsatisfactory to me and which I think most injudicious, embarrassing and wasteful. But I have accepted the duty subject to its contingencies. I have not thought it necessary to throw it up as the difficulties have been developed, and until I do so with due notice I am in honor bound to use all my energies, and all the energies I can by any means tackle in, to accomplish the best results thus left possible.

I perfectly understand that it remains in a great degree dependent on other men what these results shall be — men whom I have not selected, whose duties I have not determined and whose tastes, personal interests, prejudices and misinformation may be very unfavorable to my purposes. I know that they are not efficiently under my command. But through these men by such persuasion and education as my constitution of mind is adapted to use, and theirs to receive I must operate, or not at all. The conditions in this respect are not worse than I have had to meet more than once before. I have therefore been prepared to take a good deal for granted which you say that I do not know.

Perhaps I should not be in more favorable humor for what I need to do if I knew it better — at any rate I do not want to know it better for it ought not to affect my course if it were ten times worse.

Provided nothing waits which it is my duty to supply and that I do all the best possible to anticipate, guard against and piece out the short comings of others, then if the work after all fails here and there to be promptly, regularly, systematically and economically done and the results to be satisfactory I need not blame myself.

But as to your part in this work the case is wholly different. If anything for which I depend on you fails to work in perfectly; if the business is in any way disconcerted through your being behind hand or not in perfect rapport with me, I am as much responsible for it as for anything to be done solely by my own head and hands.

That is to say you are the only man whose work is done theoretically in my office. If what I depend on you for is not opportunely and fittingly done [501] it reflects not at all on the Committees of Congress, Mr Clark, Mr Cobb, Captain Brown or Mr Cogan, nor publicly upon you. The blame all comes upon me and upon me alone. The arrangment is not the best or the justest possible but it was originally made, as far as the making of it lay at all with me, to suit you and I believe it was the very best and justest that could then have been obtained. The alternative would probably have been to have the architectural work done in Mr Clark’s Office.

As far as I can judge it is still the best that is practicable provided your present business arrangments allow you to second me in it as fully and promptly as ever and that you still accept it with the hearty good will which you once assured me that you did.

If such is not the case I cannot think that the fault is mine, and it can do no possible good for you, in dealing with me to assume that it is. It can only give me and provoke me to give you useless pain, and that result I hope that you are as desirous to avoid as I am.

I would close with some expressions of good will but if you have thought my conduct toward you evinced ill-will such professions could only make matters worse. For unquestionably

I am what I have been