A Letter of Thanks

To George W. Julian

Henry George

[A letter from San Francisco dated 27 November 1879.
Reprinted from the Indiana Magazine of History [year and issue not avaialble]

Dear Sir:

Your kind note of the 19th received. I value your opinion, for I have a high admiration of your services and character, and what you say of my book pleases me very much. It is, as you say, profoundly religious -- not that I am what is called a religious man, for I have no formal creed and never go to church -- but that a strong, deep religious idea rises inevitably out of such thought. And to me the faith that has thus arisen has been and is a great comfort - sometimes inexpressibly so. The book, in itself and its antecedents, represents to me a good deal of labor and not a little sacrifice, but it has brought at least this reward. You will understand what I mean, as you have understood what in the book some will not understand. I of course, do not know your inner life, but I know that to every man who tries to do his duty there come trials and bitterness in which he needs all the faith he can hold to.

I thank you for the good words which you tell me you will speak for the book. You can do in this way great service. For much depends upon first reception, and a book which challenges so much that is buttressed by authority, and which moreover comes from an unknown man, will of course be contemptuously pooh-poohed by the commonplace critic and ordinary routine professor. If the book gets a start and attracts attention it will do much toward bringing to the front the great land question, and giving us something real in our politics. Appleton & Co., of New York, have the book in press, and I am anxiously expecting day by day that they will publish it. They will then send it to the papers and magazines, to whom so far I have not been at liberty to send any of the little edition I printed.

I wished very much to get acquainted with you, and was very much chagrined that I missed the opportunity, and especially to find that Mrs. Julian had been here while you were absent in Los Angeles and when we might have paid her some attention. The fault was my own, and arose from a habit of concentration into which I got while writing that book, to which it was necessary. But either East or West, I hope to meet you again. With respects to Mrs. Julian, I am, Yours very truly,