"Not to be behindhand in co-operating with your fortunes, I called on Truebner at once about your Japanese letters.... "If you will be my prime minister and battle the sharps for me over there, I shall be very glad. I am much obliged by your advice and friendly information. Pray continue to keep me _au fait_. "My forthcoming work, 'The Eighth Commandment,' is a treatise. It is partly autobiographical. You shall have a copy.... "I should take it very kindly of you if you would buy for me any copies (I don't care if the collection should grow to a bushel of them, or a sack) of any American papers containing characteristic matter,--melodramas, trials, anything spicy and more fully reported than in the 'Weekly Tribune,' which I take in. Don't be afraid to lay out money for me in this way, which I will duly repay; only please write on the margin what the paper contains that is curious. You see I am not very modest in making use of you. You do the same with me. You will find I shall not forget you. "Yours, very sincerely, "CHARLES READE." In a letter dated February 8, 1861, he wrote me, "Your London publishers sent me a copy of your narrative of your tour with the Prince of Wales" ("Royalty in the New World, or The Prince of Wales in America"), "which I have read with much pleasure.... "I have on hand just now one or two transactions which require so much intelligence, firmness, and friendly feeling to bring them to a successful issue that, as far as I am concerned, I would naturally much rather profit by your kind offer than risk matters so delicate in busy, careless, and uninventive hands. I will, therefore, take you at your word, and make you my plenipotentiary. "I produced some time ago a short story, called 'A Good Fight,' in 'Once a Week.' I am now building on the basis of that short tale a large and very important mediaeval novel in three volumes" ("The Cloister and the Hearth"), "full of incident, character, and research. Naturally, I do not like to take nothing for manuscript for, say, seven hundred pages at least of fresh and good matter. But here pinches the shoe.... Please not to show this to any publisher, but only the enclosed, with which you can take the field as my plenipotentiary. I think this affair will tax your generalship. I shall be grateful in proportion as you can steer my bark safe through the shoals. Shall be glad to have a line from you by return, and will send a part of the sheets out in a fortnight. I think you may speak with confidence of this work as likely to produce some sensation in England."