Preview
Identifier
MSS114_B01F02_004A
Creation Date
6-9-1890
Keywords
Paul Laurence Dunbar, primary sources, Black history, Black poets, prominent Ohioans
Description
Full text of letter (3 pages) to Mr. Faber (likely Charles W. Faber), owner of the Democratic newspaper:
Dayton Ohio June 9th 1890
Mr. Faber: Sir,
After having worked the circulation of your paper up to sixty, fifty having been agreed upon and having placed the paper in a condition to increase steadily its circulation; I find that you willfully and persistently fail to keep your part of the agreement. Whether your action is either honest or gentlemanly is not for me to say. Suffice it to say that your action added to the fact that I have accepted the editor-in-chiefship of the High School Times, causes me to resign. Make what use you please of the sixty subscriptions which you, to use a very polite word, induc- (next page) ed me to get. I heard of and know you Mr. Faber when you were on the "Record" years ago. I knew your mother and the Faber family when you were exceedingly, yes even distressingly poor, and I judge that it is no more than right that you after having struggled up through adversities to a tolerably fair place in the world should try to crush and deceive people who can ill afford to lose, through not quite so poverty stricken as you were when I knew you in past years.
And by the way this reminds me that I still have in my possession a story, which you wrote when trying to gain some notice in the world; I shall always keep it to remember your kindness by.
Accept the work I did on your paper, for I worked hard. Yours (?) and with my best wishes,
Paul L. Dunbar
317 W. Washington Str.
P.S. Six months was a rather short time to wait for my promised wages but I could not afford to walk and wear out my shoes getting news for nothing, although by the middle of my June vacation I could have run the circulation of the paper up very high as in my hands your little "Democratic" sheet was becoming popular.
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Primary Item Type
Personal Correspondence
Rights
This item is part of the Paul Laurence Dunbar House collection at Ohio History Connection, Columbus, Ohio. The collection contains items from 219 N. Summit St., Dayton, Ohio (later 219 N. Paul Laurence Dunbar St.), the home Dunbar purchased for his mother, Matilda J. Dunbar, in 1904. Paul Laurence Dunbar lived there until his death in 1906; Matilda lived there until her death in 1934. It is now the Paul Laurence Dunbar House Historic Site, part of the National Park Service.
Keywords
Paul Laurence Dunbar, primary sources, Black history, Black poets, prominent Ohioans
