File:Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries- Volume 10, page 18, November 23, 1858.jpg

Transcription:

heart, kind and modest — disposed, too, to let a clever man put what estimate he pleases upon himself — to accept him at it. Like all the Americans I have ever met he [Jesse Haney] confounds self-distrust, want of power of self assertion with weakness, lack of ability — and is apt to go to the extreme in the opposite case. This Saturday Press is in the worst taste possible. Bad blood, ill-breeding, egotism, assumption and weakness are its component elements. With coarse boasts of independence their are any amount of palpable axe-grindings. [William] North’s stories are reprinted besides [Henry] Clapp’s Parisian trash, and his own stories from Harpers Mag. The “Dramatic Feulleton” by Fitz james O’Brien, with his distinguished name to each article (why wasn’t English good enough for their paper, I wonder?) is cleverish, but infernally conceited. O’B’ actually reviewed his own two-act farce of the “Gentleman from Ireland” (plot hocked from the French — a thing that even the venial [Ed. G.P.] Wilkins of the Herald has the grace to refrain from in similar cases. And after pointing out its faults with an affectation of candor absolutely delicious, he wound up with the information of how often it has been played — “always filling the house.” Oh! Erin go Brag! — Brag! Brag!

The paper will last just as long as the milch-cow [Edward] Howland sinks money in it. And — God save the mark! — before the ineffable trash appeared, if they didn’t talk of it’s going to be equal in merit to the Atlantic Mag, in point of literary production! B———ah!!