[Letter] [August ?]17,[1890],n.p.[Sunday P.M.17th] [to F.H. Giddings]

[August ?] 17, [1890], n. p. [Sunday P.M. 17th]

Dear Friend,
       I must have a chat
with you on general principles,
as it is the time when that
is in order. Things have rushed
me some of late. It has been
the busiest summer for years.
It is vacation only by the
calendar. I have even done a
certain amount of work, which
for me is all out of rule in
the summer months. First
was Wittelschöfer, of the Karl
Marx family, only a rather
distant cousin. I told what I
know of him for the Columbia men.
Then a rushing together of things
about the Ethics of Land Tenure
for the [lecture?]. This is very dry
and argumentative and
so uninteresting that I hope it
will do to put in the bottom
trench as a sort of concrete
under somebody else's presentable
system of philosophy. It is hard
for me to stop analyzing when I
know readers will be tired completely
out with it, if indeed there are
any readers. A merciful editor
may have a care for the readers
and for his own subscription
list. Yet to me the ethical questions
about land seem clear. What I hear
urged on one side or the other
does not often appear to go very
deeply, and I wish that the whole
issue may be made to turn on
what seem to me to be the essential
points. My paper is so hurried that
it may do quite too little to
place the questions where it belongs.
I send the Saratoga catalogue. Can
you not go to the meeting? Now
I am on that subject I
will say we leave here on
Monday Sept. 1. I hope to
reach Saratoga Wed. evening,
and expect to see my family
on route from Albany for
Northampton on Wed. at 4 P.M.
if I recollect the train rightly.
That gets them there Wed.
at about 9 P.M. I believe.
Of course we want you to
stay and have out the
visit with us that was
barely begun in the early
summer. Don't fail to give
us that gratification. There
is plenty of time before
your term begins, is there
not? I think you start later
than we, and we do not
begin till Sept. 19th.
 I must confess our
shortcomings - with the
best intentions. I have not
begun the review of Smart's
volume. It is the very next
thing on the derelict. The
ethics paper is almost done, and
I shall simply cull and condense
a little for Saratoga use,
the same material. I lately
had a week at Lake Minnetonka,
a very pleasant one, though the
work-play mixture continued. I
think I told you I wrote out to
James my whole program on the
Referendum vs. cabinet responsibility
question, and told him to make
an article. I may work the matter
into lectures this Winter; in fact I
intend to do so.

         Yours Very Truly,
              J. B. Clark