The Brigham Young Center

Gt Salt Lake City
April 19th 1866.

Mr. Aaron Stein,
O. M, Co's Office

Dear Sir:

Your communication of to-day's date, respecting the publication of a selection of Miss S. E. Carmichael's poems, with the introductory, &c., has just been handed to me.

I am much gratified at the interest which is being taken in Miss Carmichael, for I think she is a worthy and talented young lady.

Self-respect, however, would not permit me to subscribe, or to recommend to others to subscribe, to the publication of any work, <how> meritorious or valuable so ever it might be, that would have embodied in its "introductory" such a statement as is couched in one of the sentences of that of which you furnish me a copy, viz: "without the soul-expanding influences of a cultivated and liberal public sentiment." Such a statement I view as both incorrect and unjustifiable; for <(I)> consider that there is as liberal a public sentiment here as can be found in any other place on the face of the earth; and literary tastes are as highly cultivated and literary attainments as much admired here as in older and more advantageously situated communities.

Further, Miss Carmichael has declined the offer of others to publish her poems, as she has committed the volume to the charge of an excellent friend of hers.

Respectfully,

Brigham Young