To George Washington from James K. Tobine, August 1787
From James K. Tobine
[August 1787]
May it please Your Excellency
With the most profound humility I beg leave to approach You, in order to implore You, Sir, that You would be pleased to permit Your Excellency’s most illustrious Name to be prefixed to a Subscription, which I am about to solicit towards the enabling me to print, & publish a certain dramatic Work, calld Americania & Seraphina, or the Immortal Friendship, An alegorical, musical Masque.
If this very Great (and to me most important) Favour, without Sir your knowing the tendency or Design of the Work, be inadmissible: I am ready to lay my poor Manuscript at Your Excellency’s Feet,1 and beg leave to Subscribe myself, Your Excellencys Most devoted Most humble and most faithful Servt
James K. Tobine
ALS, DLC:GW. The letter is undated, but GW dockets it “Augt 1787.”
A Mr. Tobine played Ali in the tragedy of Mahomet the Imposter in Baltimore in 1782 and Sir John Millamour in Know Your Own Mind in Richmond in 1790 ( 2:73, 328–29).
1. No response to this letter and no record of the publication of Tobine’s “Americania & Seraphina” have been found.