Autograph letter signed : New York, to Mrs. [Anne Charlotte Lynch] Botta, 1873 July 31.

Regretting that he cannot accept her invitation to Newport, because of his work (as an editor of the New York Tribune). He quips that if he left, in the absence of the other editors, "the American public would not know what to think for twenty-four hours, and in the absence of sound directions from headquarters might think as it pleased, which would be too awful to contemplate."