My dear Beale: Thank you heartilly for writing as well as sending me your defense of Kit Carson, and scarification of that vulgar fraud, Joaquin Miller! I am very glad to have my own immediate impression confirmed! The fellow really knows nothing about the life he undertakes to describe, and this is the "great American poet" of the English literary journals. Why, I'd undertake to write a volume of better and truer "Songs of the Sierras" in three weeks. We authors have really fallen on evil days when such stuff passes for poetry. However, patience is my watchword; we have but to wait and see these fictitious reputations go down as fast as they go up.