[D0111AAQ], Letter from James Symington to Thomas Alva Edison, December 9th, 1901
https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/D0111AAQ
Transcription
[TAE Marginalia] <send ten dollars E> Port Huron Dec 9th 1901, Sellen Co, Michigan Respected friend-Let me congratulate you upon the fact that you have beaten the robbers in the Courts of law who sought by various pretences to appropriate your wonderful invention of the Phonograph. You have had a full experience of human depravity. As to myself I am in good health but am in my eighty forty year and cannot last very long in the course of nature. But I can congratulate myself in a long life upon perfect health also upon having seen the two wizards which have alone been recognized as such by the world in yourself and Sir Walter Scott. But a man of 84 yeas having to go out to the woods to out his winters is an anomaly. But this I am doing. You know in the rush of the modern world there is no place for an old man and I have no money to pay for hauling my wood in besides other than imperative wants I thought that remembering your former kindness to Tate you would repeat again on this crisis to the old and I think the only surviving friend of your Father and Mother. To relieve me in my present needs and necessities it would require twenty dollars which would be most gratefully received and would make me easy for the winter for we live very moderate. This Samaritan act though trying to you would be received as a great boon to us. Yours truly, Ja Symington