of this inconceivable "Cincinnati-Massachusetts" business.
_Stupiditas stupiditatum;_ I never in my life, not even in that
unpunctual House, fell in with anything that equaled it. Instant
amendment was at once undertaken for, nay it seems had been
already in part performed: "Ten volumes, following the nine you
already had, were despatched in Field & Co.'s box above two
months ago," so Chapman solemnly said and asseverated to me; so
that by this time you ought actually to have in hand nineteen
volumes; and the twentieth (first of _Friedrich_), which came
out ten days ago, is to go in Field & Co.'s Box this week, and
ought, not many days after the arrival of this Letter, to be in
Boston waiting for you there. The _Chapman's Homer_ (two
volumes) had gone with that first Field Packet; and would be
handed to you along with the ten volumes which were overdue. All
this was solemnly declared to me as on Affidavit; Chapman also
took extract of the Massachusetts passage in your Letter, in
order to pour it like ice-cold water on the head of his stupid
old Chief-Clerk, the instant the poor creature got back from his
rustication: alas, I am by no means certain that it will make a
new man of him, nor, in fact, that the whole of this amendatory
programme will get itself performed to equal satisfaction! But
you must write to me at once if it is not so; and done it shall
be in spite of human stupidity itself. Note, withal, these
things: Chapman sends no Books to America _except_ through Field
& Co.; he does not regularly send a Box at the middle of the
month; but he does "almost monthly send one Bog"; so that if
your monthly Volume do not start from London about the 15th, it
is due by the very _next_ Chapman-Field box; and if it at any
time don't come, I beg of you very much to make instant complaint
through Field & Co., or what would be still more effectual,