Riverside, Cambridge, Mass. 29 September 1870
My dear & excellent Friend,
your letter of the 5th I received a week or more ago, and have been prevented by travelling from answering it sooner. It was indeed a great pleasure to hear once more from you, for I had begun to fear I know not what, from your long silence. I am glad too to find that your pen, which I doubt not is made from a stork' s wing, has been travelling over paper and leaving behind its delightful trail of happy thoughts and odd fancies. I shall look soon for Lykke Peer and shall hope to have the pleasure myself of translating it. From its length I judge that we shall not be likely to print it in the magazine at all but bring it out as a book by itself at Christmas time.
Only a Fiddler has been published and is taken up by the public more eagerly than any of your novels save Improvisatore. I think it will prove quite popular.
The uncertainty of communication at one time made your publishers hesitate about sending you a draft in payment of your semi-annual copyright, but now that we hear from you again I shall hope shortly to make a remittance.
The October number of the Riverside contains as you will see the whole of your very popular paper on "Danish Popular Legends." Shall I not have something for the December part?
I am going to New York to-morrow for a week and I shall do myself the great pleasure of calling on Genl. Christensen. With kind greetings from your publishers, and with my own warm regards,
Most faithfully yours,
HORACE E. SCUDDER
