K. flourishes, better & better, but the monthly drain has always remained about the same since its earliest days. By the way—was the Slote note collected last month?—am hanged if I can remember now whether it was or not. How do the K accounts stand, now? Let Marsh send me a statement—not one of these damned incomprehensible professional-technical debtor-&-creditor enigmas, which none but god od & book-keepersⒶemendation can make head or tail of, but a plain sensible written-out statement of the case, which Jean can understand.

Look at the stamp on the “w White Elephant.” It is small, & perfectly simple—another sight simpler & smaller than the stamp which cost Osgood “probably” $56Ⓐemendation. Well, I am charged $45 for it—which I judge includes design—say $10. Now, do you imagine it would cost you $10 to cast that thing in brass spelter & then in brass? Why did your plate cost $28? Your part of the work did not cost you $3, if that famous Prince & P. picture cost you only $1. 50. the following two sentences squeezed onto bottom of page: Osgood will presently be in as a part owner, & he shall give his entire attention to that brass—for by God it shall succeed. I hear Orion is very sick with gastric fever.

I’m trying to cut my letter short, because I want to go to dinner—& yet I have lost a whole lot of time trying to squeeze it onto that sheet.

I like that big stamp—a gouge or two with a graver’s tool would perfect it. Suppose it did cost $28—it won’t cost $10 when I get the facilities together. I think the brass man charged the others $18 or $20, anyhow, for rent. God damn Perdition catch him, I shall call on him & ask him for statistics when I go to New York. Meantime, you ask him for them. It will puzzle the head entirely off his shoulders to explain that $25. Ten dollars for his work, $3 for yours—liberal sums, both. If he can explain the rest of the $28, raising the dead is foolishness to his talent. Inquire of him, Charley, for I am all impatience to know. And tell him to make his statistics simple & easy, for I want to take them to other founders for verification.

By ciphering-up on paper, & the higher-priced bindings, &c., shall we be able to show a four-thousand-dollar deficiency & on Bliss’s part, do you think? However, you’ll know better after you get those publishers’ estimates.