108

Wednesday at noon;

I don't know if I told you in my previous instalments about the
trouble with the Christian Science article. The girl had been badly
treated; and so loose had been the system here and so unfairly had they
dealt with her that she had every legal right to draw out with her man-
usercript and spoil the thing upon which, more than any other one thing,
depends the prosperity of McClure's Magazine in 1907. And on Saturday
she wrote a formal letter saying that she was through with us and would
call today for her manuscript. You can imagine the stew into which it
threw us. S. S. was flabbergasted. I taled it all over with him and
found the exact terms he would give her. Then I begged him to get out
when she came and let me talk to her alone. I started work this morn-
ing with the feeling that it was the most critical day the magazine
had to face this year. When she came in, I cleared everything away and
got her alone. for a good half an hour, I talked to her. I never talked
so in my life, and I never had my diplomacy so taxed. At the end of that
time, I had her. I sent at once for a stenographer, and dictated off a
letter giving terms, including paying a thousand dollars more for it than
Mr. McClure had authorized me to pay. While we were in the midst of it,
McClure, contrary to his instructions, butted in. It was an awful moment.
A word from him in the wrong place -- and he is always saying such
words -- would have spoiled it all. It was there that I did a lot of
quick thinking.
(Mr. B. is business manager)

"Mr. McClure," I said, "Mr. Brady has some news for you." That
was a great thought, for I knew that McClure was worreid to death over
a tangle among the directors. It brought the money. Out he skated. Before
his back was through the door, I was dictating again. There was a wait
which seemed hours long while the stenographer was copying off the letter;
fortunately, S. S. did not come back; and in fifteen minutes more,
I had her name signed to a cast iron contract. The first joke of the
thing is that Brady really did have news for S. S., and the second is that
he never noticed the thousand dollars additional, being forgetful -- he
had forgotten how much he had said that I could pay. He signed his
part of the agreement without a murmur. As I look over the work of
my predecessors, I begin to wonder if I'm not a business man by contrast.

Thursday Morning;

I dined last night with Paul and D. Thompson. Particulars ater.
Here is the damned Doney Island dope, or as much as I could get to-
geth er. I am positively suffused with shame to send it to you --
and you are the feminine person who once refused to let me see any of
your best and finished work because you didn't think that it was good
enough. Please don't waste any time with this -- you have enough
troubles with your manuscripts of your own.

The Boss, thank the high gods, is going to Chicago next week.
There will be a chance for cleaning up a tremendous lot. And now to
go through the mail, write twenty letters, read six chapters of Catherine
Cecil Thurston's new serial, see about the January announcement, and
hold a long conference over Christian Science, together with inte r-
ruptions for a hundred sources.

I had my photograph taken yesterday.

Wednesday;

That was a sour and dour instalment yesterday.
Things would have straightened out a little today if
I hadn't been sick. That sickness is a comedy all by
itself. Last night, late in the evening, Billy and
I boxed two hard rounds. After that, Billy insisted on
sending out for a can of beer, of which I drank a
little. Just as we were going to bed, the Bliss
family, which lives in the next apartment and of whom

I shall have a long tale to tell you some time,
telephoned over to say that they were on the verge
of cutting a watermelon; would blerb and blirwin
come over? We went, I forgetting what I had just
drunk; and on top of the beer I sunk much watermelon
I took this morning with the feeling that I had been
drunk a week. Never did my head ache so. Then I
began to lose and lose things. I staggered down the
to the office; and there I lost some more. My stomach
refused to get settled, so that at last I gave it up
up and went home to bed. I goy to sleep, and at one
o'clock woke with head and stomach clear. I
had to laugh at myself, sick as I was, to think of
myself as the little boy who eats things that are
not good for the little tummy.

Wednesday morning;

The hunger for human companionship of S. S. McClure has been something of an embarrassment in the last two days. He clings to the people in the office, loves them, leans on them; in them he finds most of his diversion. It used to be Miss Tarbell; and it is really pathetic, the way he misses her. He speaks of it continually. For the departure of the rest of "that outfit", even his old partner John Philipps, he affects to care nothing at all. He says that he will miss Philipps three or four years from now; but at present it is Ida Tarbell for whom he longs. "I understand the loves of the angels in Heaven when I think of her," he says. "It was so that I loved her at woman; not as a woman but as a human being." There is something fine, too, in the way the old fox and lion, regarded as crazy for years, has pulled himself together in this emergency and is going to "show them." As a matter of fact, we have got to show a great deal. The day's announcements bring the news that the insurgents have with them Peter Dunne, the biggest, coolest brain behind editorial work in this country, and William Allen White. And God knows how many good fiction people they will take with them. It is going to be a hot fight, of which little Willie will have to bear more of the brunt and blame than will his boss.

To return, though, to the personal side of S. S. While Miss Cather was here, he rather bothered her by going with about half his meals with her and giving her no rest. Now, she has got one on a vacation of a week, and he is taking it out on me. Night before last, he invited me to dinner, and I had to spend most of the evening with him. Last night, it came out so that I could not avoid taking him to dinner; and it was ten o'clock before I could break away and get home to put in two hours at reading manuscripts, which called for my earnest attention. I am not saying that S. S. isn't interesting; he is a wonder; but there's a little too much of him in this sick and busy time. Our talk past night was pretty nearly straight magazine; and I did at least one thing; I settled with him about twenty things which I haven't been able to bring to his attention at the office, simply for lack of a chance to get him

alone and concentrated long enough.

Such a queer, human mixture. Such gleams of petty spites, petty
vanities, small hates, mixed all up with the greatest kindliness of
view, the strongest personal affections and appreciations! Such in-
cidents as come out now and then, such glinting phrases. Most people,
you know, regard him as a madman. He is all of that, but the most
loveable madman. I am rather with him in his views of the insurgents;
I think that those super-efficient muck-rakers never quite appreciated
this original jewel of a prison.

He told me last night the story of the time he went up from Egypt
to Turkey to get her story out of Miss Stone, the captured mission-
ary. In the course of it, he stopped, and said, with the smirking conceit of a
lad of eighteen:

"There was a woman in love with me on that trip; an American woman."

"So the adventure had even its love interest," said I.

"Not on my part," said he. "I wasn't in love with her. But she
cried like anything when I left." There was something so young in it;
the speech of a man who never had his young gallantries, because he was
too busy. Again, he said:

"Mollie Best was a hard-working little Scotch stenographer who never had a chance. She was supporting a big family; and Miss Roseboro' found her and got me to take her up. It was like a homeless and beaten dog that crawls to your door and gets fed; as soon as he is fed and warmed he goes out and finds another dog who's up against it and brings him to you." One of the spots in his life that seem to stick in his memory is the time Miss Roseboro' cried when he was going to fire her. "And it was a lucky cry for me," he said last night, in referring to it for the fiftieth time.

There is another little human thing going on here; and it's pretty
and a little tearing to the heart. The beautiful Miss Bray is dying of
the first week away from home.

This Miss Bray is a person. S. S. and I have agreed between our-
selves that we won't have her long. She's too pretty and too nice.
Some chap is going to snap her away. She is a little girl, brown of skin
and eyes and hair, neat of figure, pretty of ways, and tremendously
efficient. Her eyes are not only pretty in themselves, but they are

full of truth and laughter, and her hair makes a great stack in the back of her neck. When she arrived, the first morning, I found nothing for her to do for a time. Without a word, she began to tear through my room like a silent cyclone, putting things to rights. In two hours, she had discovered things in the other old desk in my room which no one in the shop ever knew to be there; things they had lost for years. Like magic, she had that desk to rights. I went away for a half an hour, and when I got back, she had put mine to rights. Then she attacked the room of S. S. It is one of his peculiarities that he never uses a desk. He does business in an arm chair; and when he has letters or papers to look over, he pulls up another chair and dumps it down before him. He dictates all his letters; and when the time comes for signing them, he pulls up a chair or grabs the corner of a table, or gets hold of any plane surface in sight. Of course, he never has a pen or ink handy; and the stenographer brings in to him pen and ink when he gets ready to sign. As a matter of fact, he signs them only when he feels like it, which is seldom. Usually, he says:

"Tell Irwin to scratch my signature on them." So I forge his name, and it is done.

In place of a desk in his room, there is a table, piled high. Miss Bray beheld that table, and went for it like a break. In an hour, she had piled up, classified, and sent to their destination documents which dated as far back as 1899. Then, she rested and waited for more work. Talk about your marvels!

However: last night, just before I left, I passed through S. S.'s room. There, curled up in his big chair, her feet drawn up under her, was the little, brown figure of the Bray girl. She was gazing into the wall with straight eyes, and if she knew that I passed she didn't make any sign of it. "Nostalgia," said I. Later in the evening, S. S. spoke of her. She is the only daughter in a family of brothers in Chicago and the daughter of an old editorial writer. This is the first time in her life that she has been away from home -- and she is living in a New York boarding house. The stories they are overlooking right in their own shop!

For you are right about the stenographers making a tale. There is a lot more that I haven't told you in the way of humors about that roost where the six stenographers knock the rest of us and worship Bynner --

but it is half past eight, here comes the rest of the office, and I must
wait until the next time to tell you about the snappy Miss Carroll, the
beautiful Miss Grady, and the knocking Miss Morphy. They are all
as Irish as the rest of the staff is Scotch -- I pause to say that
out of the whole present McClure staff there is not one who doesn't
carry Scotch blood in his veins.

Saturday:

March 27, 1906

79

It was midnight on Wednesday, and I was just putting on my coat to go home, when Arthur Seavey, who runs the Laffan Bureau downstairs, tapped me on the shoulder and said:

"That man talking to the Managing Editor there is W. A. M. Goode, managing editor of the London Standard. He has heard of you from some of the men who were at Portsmouth, and wants to meet you. Come down after he gets through there, and I will introduce you." I have heard a lot of that man Goode. He has been written up all over as the youngest managing editor in London and as the American managing editor of a London daily. In fact, he is not quite an American, because he was born and partly brought up in London, but he did most of his newspaper work there. So I was keen to meet him, for I know that he is a stunning person.

When, ten minutes later, I saw him go downstairs and followed, I found Forman leaning over Seavey's desk; Probably you remember tales of Forman, the scourge of 111 East Twenty-third street last year. I regret to be obliged to lay something of Forman's peculiar unattraction to Harvard, of which he is an outburst. But most of it comes from the Kingdom of Israel, to which he is attached by ancestry. He has neither guts nor perceptions, he has a perennial youngness which will grow younger until he reaches sixty, when he will blow off through the hole where his guts ought to be, and he has a sweet habit of laying soft and clammy hands all over you in an attempt to be friendly in a manner calculated to make a stranger ask questions. Further, he has a gall which bites through worlds and a cheek that has resisted thirteen-inch shells. When he quit the Sun to go on the literary Digest, a silent prayer went up to Heaven from the Sun shop.

Well, Seavey hesitated, uncertain what to do. Too well he knows Forman. Too well he foresaw what would happen if he introduced him to the Managing Editor of the Standard. I was on the point of saying to Seavey, "I will be back in five minutes," when Seavey took the bit in his teeth, turned, and introduced me to Goode. And of course, he had to introduce Forman. That settled it. Forman, throwing public spasms, froze to Goode. There was no use of Seavey or me trying to talk to him. Forman was too busy showing him what a bright young man he was and what a

friend of Roosevelt. Goode asked us down to have a drink. We lingered for an hour. The kinds of asses, the whole herd, that Forman made of himself, I will not try to enumerate. Goode spent most of the time breaking his back over the bar, trying to get away from Forman's caressing hands. When the thing was at its very heigth, and Seavey and I were wondering if there wasn't a limit to etiquette, Forman spake and said:

"We're all having such a nice time that I would like to renew it. Couldn't all you fellows dine with me at the Harvard Club tomorrow night?" You should have seen Goode hunt an engagement.

Dismissing Forman, there must be a great yarn in that Goode. I should like to know all about his life. He is curiously balanced between the American and the Englishman. It is as though the elements in him had not yet fused; first one and then the other come out by flashes. Now he is the conservative and conventional English publicist, and then he is the unconventional, keen, iconoclast American newspaper man. Never have I seen quite the same thing in any other man. We spoke of San Francisco, of which he retained an affective memory as the best American city to be in. He said that the real San Francisco man seldom likes New York, but that they always like London.

"I was there in 1893 as a private in Troop D, Fourth Cavalry," he said. That made me curious to know what he was doing in the ranks, but of course I didn't ask. But he added this great bit:

In the course of the McKinley administration, he saw McKinley several times, first as star man of the Associated Press, and then later as the visiting editor of the Standard. In that last capacity, he was receiv-
ed almost as an Ambassador.

Last week, he went to the White House to see Roosevelt. He waited for him in the ante-chamber. "Colonel Roosevelt," announced the striker, and in walked the President.

And Goode, before he thought, clicked his heels together, stood at attention, and came to a salute.

"I could have killed myself, with shame of it," he said. "I don't know

when I have given my pride such a jolt. But they said 'colonel', and
there came that military figure, and the old discipline dropped through a
hole in my memory, and there I was a trooper in the Fourth Cavalry
again!'

I should have liked to see a great deal more of him. He is one of
those newspaper men with the broader view -- which is why it happened, I
suppose.

That second job, the one on the weekly I mean, looks as good as
assured. I hesitate even to put its name on paper, so close are they
keeping the secret. For to have it get out now might ruin everything,
seeing that they are making a very good bargain in the sale, and if
others found how cheap the old thing is going, they might step in and
but it out from under our feet. But *they* have found their financial
backing, and the other people are putting their affairs into shape to
get out. Beginning with the transfer, there is going to be an unusual
spasm of work for me, and I am not what you can call a person of leisure
even now. For I must go down there every morning before I go to work
on the Sun, and put in as much time as I can getting onto the ropes
before plunging in. I am really afraid of that job -- in some ways it is
pretty much past me. The Times has refused to tie up with the McClures,
but wants me just the same and wants me at the figures they quoted. I am
not sure whether I want it, in case the other job should fail me, with-
out the McClure backing. I know what it is to cook up a Sunday Supplement
every week out of your own head, even in the provinces, and I can imagine
what it is in New York. The other job, if it succeeds, will be a place
well worth having, though involving a lot of work for which I am not
specially fitted. How I am studying the papers these days, to try to
get the inside of rate bills and insurance investigations, and other
things in which, heretofore, I have taken not the slightest interest.
In the meantime, if you begin to see a lot of excruciatingly funny stories
in the Sun, don't lay them to me. Selden, the best newspaper humorist
alive, and the funniest man that the Sun ever had, is coming back, they
having offered him inducements in view of my near departure. Selden
quit at about the time that I came on and went to reading copy on the Post,

because he was tired of being funny. Now he's coming back fresh, and I feel a great deal better about leaving, seeing that there will be more strength to leave behind. Selden is a specialist in humor. We can't do anything else more than passably well; but he has a little whimsical touch that just fits the school of the New York Sun. Some of his stories of NEWXXXXXX Firemen's Tournaments and Lilian Russell's beaux are newspaper classics.

He is a little man with a pointed beard and a pair of big, pathetic brown eyes. He has the sadness of the real humorist. He never laughs and he never larks, and to talk to him for ten minutes is to take chances with the blues.

Coincidences, of course, are bromidical; yet this string was so unusual that I cannot forbear to tell it.

I dropped into a saloon yesterday for luncheon. There was a man came and sat down before me, an oldish man of gentle ways. In a moment, he addressed a remark across the table to me; wherefore I knew that he was a stranger, because no two of these benderlog ever speak without introduction, each having the best of reasons for believing that the other is a thief. He said that he was down from Buffalo as witness in a trial; and he asked me presently if I belonged in New York. I did not; I belonged in San Francisco if anywhere.

"I was in San Francisco last year," he said. I liked the people, but not the climate. But Charlie Field said --"

"God his love, do you know Charlie Field?"

"Stayed at his house while I was there. Do you know him? What's your name?"

"W. H. Irwin."

"I used to have a great friend named Irwin. He used to be yard master of the Erie away back. Name was Smith Irwin."

"Yes. He was my uncle. What is your name?"

"Dr Greene. I am chief health officer of Buffalo."

"Do you spell it with an 'E'?"

"Yes."

"Don't come from anywhere about Canandaigua, do you?"

concerns his artists. One and all, they had got the Hearst fever from their work for him. Therefore, they began to bet on him -- for they were able to get odds of five to one. They lost, of course. Hearst learned of this, made it his business to learn how much they had bet, and sent them checks for the amount. Another tale, too long in its details, relates to a woman who wrote to Hearst through Mrs. Hearest, a letter knocking her, Isabel. Hearst sent it at once to the City Editor with instructions to show it to Miss Frazer.

Isabel is going to have her pay raised.

"For God's sake," said Majesty, throwing herself into my arms after the manner of proscribed court etiquette, "Don't tell Sadi. She'll make me live up to my income!"

Hallie leaves Chicago today for Iowa, where she is going to visit some of her relatives for two or three weeks. After that, she goes to Washington to visit Mrs. Lane for a week or two, and after that she will come to New York. The Chee-ild has the anolds or something (the same things you had removed) cut from his nose; and he is said to have come through well and to be as cheerful as ever.

The person who came write eighteen tales in the space in which you have written these has nothing to fear from editors. It is a superhuman feat of invention, considering your quality. For of course the hacks hired at twenty a week by Street and Smith turn out as much work as that, but it has no quality. At your level, the feat is great. Remember that I have wrung from the author a consent to see two of the m -- one the President's Nephew, as a payment for putting a friend of mine in it, and one a serious tale which you admitted grudgingly that you were not

Wednesday, November 21, 1906.

I don't know how Miss Cather and I live in this week of our Lord. The storms keep on gathering; and they are complicated by the lady of the McClures. I have a positive superstition about the wives of the men I work for. I understand that I am in bad favor with the imperial lady. On the whole it is better so. My dropping off to sleep in her house is a fierce insult, I suppose. At any rate, cards are out this afternoon for a tea at her house tomorrow -- and I'm the only person on the place left out. What Heaven, to be left out of a tea. And I'm getting in the state where I don't give a damn. Oh, if I could only be left alone to work!

If this lasts very long, we'll be carried out of the shop feet first some day!

It's been a week since I've read a manuscript or written a letter that amounted to anything. I sought to elude the deluge by getting there with a stenographer this morning at eight. I had just got started when His Majesty came in. He explained that he had been thinking about the magazine all night, and couldn't rest until he had got an early start on laying out a larger editorial policy. After that, I up and fled, avoiding the daily editorial conference, which was something fierce.

I hear from Frank(Herewith enclosing xxxxxxxx closing this subject far this letter) that Ridgeway's is in bad shape. Others say the same. Ned Townsend told me at lunch yesterday that they are just "letting the old cat die;" and there are reports all over town of the way Ridgeway might think if he knew what a man of that age were thinking. The best of all would be a man who had not been a member of the club.

has deeded all he has to the backers just to get the funds to pull along. It seems to have been a woeful failure and a great waste of good brains.

Oliver Herford, town jester, has perpetrated another. He says: "I greatly admire the works of Rudyard Kipling. I consider him the Richard Harding Davis of literature."

Since I have written you I have culled another tale from my own experience. Monday, a bunch of actors sat at the next table to me in the club, talking loudly as do most of their kind. One of them asked another what he was doing.

"Same old show all the evenings," he said. "I'm also doubling by playing three afternoons a week in 'Pippa Passes.'"

"Browning," said the other. "Ah, a great poet."

"Yes," said he who enacted Pippa Passes, "Yes, but after all my favorite poet is James Whitcomb Riley, and I don't know of any poem that I like better than 'Laugh and the World Laughs With You.'"

Also I heard this true tale: (I have a kind of belief that I wrote you this in my last, but here it goes in case I didn't) There was a drummer operating in the Far West. He was an awful poker man. It was his custom to take in on his travels a far-off army post, where the officers, contrary to regulations, played high, especially when they had an outsider to play with. In this case, this time, he had in his pockets three hundred dollars of the firm money. He lost heavily. In the midst of the play, in came the officer of the day. He took a hand, which he had no matter of business to be doing, and, for comfort, unstrapped his revolver and belt and hung it on the mantel piece just above the seat of the drummer.

The drummer lost heavily. At the end of the evening it was all gone -- his own money and the three hundred dollars of the firm. He rose calmly from his seat, reached up, and, before they knew what he was going to do, drew from its holster the revolver and whipped it over to cover the officers.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I have you covered. Don't you dare make a move until you listen to me. That won't my money I lost. It belonged to my firm. I can't pay it back." Suddenly he turned the gun against his own head.

"If you don't give me back that money, I shall commit suicide right here. Don't any of you move. If a man comes toward me, I'll do it anyhow. Now quick, do I get back the money or do I blow out my brains here in your club?"

There was about a quarter of a minute of silence, and then a Major spoke up.

"All right. We give the money back -- word of an officer." If they hadn't, and he had blown his brains out, they would have been cashiered to the last man.

The officers used to hold debate about this thing, wondering if it was really a bluff. Some maintained one side and some the other. They all thought the same way six months after that, when he killed himself in St. Louis after losing a lot of firm money in poker.

You ask me about the jest upon St. Augustine being your favorite book. It wasn't St. Augustine, it was Thomas A. Kempis. And I said it one evening at your house, the evening when Rufus came home from the woods, I think. Now, slam my memory for incident again.

And regarding your talk about my work. I have waited to talk back until I should have a chance to do some writing. But this time I don't think that you can blame me (seeing that I am on the verge of a nervous exhaustion) if I haven't even tried to write for ten days.

In a week more, I hope, the madness of the Chief hixxxx will have run its course to exhaustion, and he will have lit out for the tall timber.

Then, I shall go at a tale which dimly suggests itself, of a train wreck. This is to be a tale without plot, or without much plot, one of those things in fiction which are imagined and yet give the impression of a transcript from real life. I, m not even ready to talk it over yet.

I think we're going to lose him pretty soon. This can't last forever. It's going to be a long road, though. Sometimes, the only thing which keeps me straight on the path is the remembrance that most magazine men, when I took this job, said that no man alive could hold down S. S. McClure. I have done it and returned him the greatest profits in the history of his concern; and I can't turn back now that I have our feet on the highway.

And as for the influence of the weather on me, I think that I am rather influenced by it, but don't realize it at the time. The main thing I notice is the cumulative effect of winter. When it gets far along, say by the end of February, I am so tired of it, that I become hated and unnecessary season makes me mad every time I think of it. By the time spring comes, I am too bored even to feel glad.

And so to get renewed and strong to wrestle with the Chief again.

But oh, we've bought the Cutting novel!

I nearly forgot to tell you this. They are having a Schurz memorial rally tonight. The Chef has a box, and he has been expecting us all to be among those present. But I hadn't the guts to face a dull meeting and the McClure family at the same time. So I begged off. I told the chief that I was pretty tired. I said that the last ten days had pretty well exhausted me.

"Why, what's happened to tire you in the last ten days?" he asked. And he asked it in all the world's innocence.

Wednesday morning.

Behold me at eight o'clock in the morning waiting for a
stenographer in order to get in a lot of letters with a stenographe-
before the regular madness of these trying days. I am in the
state that if one touches me I am ready to cry, and all the
woman in me is up permost. It began again worse than ever on
Monday morning -- a project to take me out of my chair and make
his incompetent brother Robert managing editor, I to be editor and
"devote myself to the larger editorial policy." The battle
raged, and I, having the whole force of the McClure family, could
only bring off a draw. He is to take my desk, but under such con-
ditions that X will be only a clerk. There is this advantage:
that I shall have the title of editor and general manager of the
magazine, with power to enforce what I could get only by diplomacy
before. I have the honor to report, incidentally, that I made this
magazine make more money in November than it ever before made in
any month of its career. Also, I have made them take the Cutting
serial. But I am just on the verge of hysterics all the time.

The clouds are gathering fast about the Master mind of the
old fox and lion, and he is fighting the blackness of madness
like a drowning man. It is only my pity which makes it possible for
me to stand him.

148

Between Friday and Saturday:

I am well reproached, dear my madame, to be but a bedlame correspondent: this is so, and I beg your pardon for it. But my answer is that I am sick, just now, of soul and mind. The thing has struck in. A heaviness and yet a nervous irritability by day and a riot of stupid sleep, shot with horrid dreams by night -- these are the symptoms. Again and again in the fortnight, I have missed my dinner completely -- because I have come in, set down for a little sleep before dinner -- and wakened, sitting lopped over in my chair, at two or three in the morning. In fact, that is what happened tonight, except that I got in dinner first. She came home, sat down before the fire -- and am just awake at two a. M. These eccentricities of sleep are only symptoms. It is as though the paresis of McClure were infecting me. It is not that of course; it is the wearing and tearing effect of a constant and irritating mental struggle not unaccompanied by an emotional struggle. I can't get him out of my dreams by night. Mostly, he is dead and I am looking between his fingers to see if there is any blood visible by which I may know if there is life in him, or if he is going to be buried alive. (A woman, on some unfamiliar errand, is scurrying along twenty third street. She is simply scared to death to be out at this time of night, the hour of the home-faring street-walker, and her attitude shows it. Which reminds me of this tale of some witty Frenchman or other. He was accosted at a street corner by a regular Parisian street walker, who asked him, probably as an approach, to get her across the crowded street. He did it; and when they reached the curb, he bowed. "Madame," he said, "Vous êtes chez kxx vous.") It is always the chief in these dreams, and in spite of ten or twelve hours of stupid sleep, I wake stupid and wrong. The whole situation is unnatural. He had prepared to go away a week ago, it appears, but she made a scene -- Madame McClure I mean -- saying that he should not go unless she went along, that she

must be along to save him from occasion of sin. And, as he said path-
etically to me yesterday: "It wouldn't be a rest for me with Mrs. McClure."
So he is keeping on here in a state of mind and body
away beyond the point where he usually lights out. He is simply
a lunatic with full powers to do his harm upon us, and he might simply
blow the business up at any moment. When I think how hard Miss
Cather and I are fighting him to keep his business alive and permanent
for his children, and how she is blockin us at every turn --
then much do I marvel at the inequalities of fate.

And so if I have misunderstood sometimes, as witness the matter of
St. Augustine, call it but a violet in palmy nature and not a flaw in
a friend. Truly, if it was not St. Thomas Aquinas, I don't know who it
was and I am greatly at fault. For I don't remember that you ever spoke
to me of St. Augustine. You're not meaning Marcus Aurelius, are you?

As it happens, you had me a little wrong on the surprised question
about Thomas Aquinas. That remark about the strongly sexed woman
taking it out on emotional religion was impersonal. But I was intensely
and vitally curious to see why you liked it and if you liked it --
for I'd never before found any religious emotion in you, and Thomas
seemed to me to have no appeal except to the religious emotions. It is
Catholic religious emotionalism as distinguished from Protestant.

I'm so glad and proud about your twenty stories, and so sorry that
I shall never see most of them unless the decree is mitigated -- and then
only in hard and irrevocable print. For even so small a person as I
might help, I know, by suggestion and criticism. And then, I
should like to see them for their own sakes. I stumbled upon your
name in the last issue of Ridgway's. I conscientiously averted my
head and read not, although while I looked I saw that it was but a
slight thing and would have been but a small sin to confess -- like

the sin of the French school girl. Some one, I know not who, tells the
tale. One of the girls preparing at Easter for a confession, was seen
writing with industry. The other girls, finding what she had written,
impolitely read it. She was practicing what she was going to say, and
this is how it began:

"Father, I accuse myself to be an adulteress. Father, I have
broken the seventh commandment. Father, I permitted the gentleman
to kiss my hand." So, seeing that the thing as I saw it, was only
a little piece in a panel, it would only have been kissing the hand of
sin, I suppose, had I read on.

But your thought is my thought when you pride yourself that the
work of your hands is not all of one sort, that you have not yielded to
the temptation of local color or of following a success. For those
people of the Myra Kelley stamp are journalists, not litterateurs,
after all. They have in their lives one rich human experience, and
they tell that over, in varying mechanical forms, to the end of their
days. The most encouraging fact I know about Myra is that her tale in
the January number is about the Irish -- albeit the Irish of the East
Side with a strong flavor of Eva Gonorowsky.

But she's the scrub and you are the thoroughbred in this game, and you're
untrue to your talent if you don't let the infinite variety of tales that
is in you find an outlet. This feat of twenty stories in the space
in which you have done them surpasses de Maupassant.

They are getting out an edition de luxe for the holiday trade of
"The City that Was." As soon as they are bound up and ready, I shall
send you one.

The people on the floor below are pounding on the wall as a delicate
hint that people should write with pencil at this hour of the night.
So I shall say one thing more and close. It is possible and even pro-
bable that I shall be able to get to Boston over Thanksgiving --

just for the day -- come up the night before on the boat and go back
that same night by the midnight train.

Incidentally -- this will be mailed at about half past twelve in the morning of Saturday, and I am curious to know when delivered (They pound again) Will you tell me when it arrives -- what time of what day I mean?

And so to the gardens of sleep.

Saturday night;

I weep with you to the extent of five dollars, the sum that I risked on Harvard's chances, seeing that there was a Californian coaching the team. Also, I went with John Oskison, a Stanford man who finished at Harvard, to the Harvard Club, where I sat in the great hall modelled after Memorial and listened to the bulletins from the front. A gloom settled and settled over the assemblage, an unrived gloom, so that by the time Johnnie took me home to dinner, I was as low in spirits as mine hosts. It must have been a great game to see. Now I will tell you something: in all my own college course, I never yet made a bet on an intercollegiate event. It remained for me in a foreign land and upon alien chances to win my first five -- and lose.

Do you know of Oskison? He is a quarter Cherokee; his mother was a princess in the tribe, I believe. He writes fiction, as perhaps you have perceived. For four years at Stanford, he was a coarse Western person like your little and handsome friend here. After that, he took a year at Harvard and acquired calm and an accent. Somehow, the fade-away Harvard accent seems to fit him ill. He's big and thick-set like the Cherokees and Creeks all of them, a little stolid, and runs amuck with a wild L南方ian anger about once a year. They have a baby, the Oskisons, and she, in her sixteen months, has a dash of the pappoose in her. It is queer to watch it flash out now and then.

It becomes evident that I should never have let that brother of McClure's get on the desk. I have already intercepted a plot to get me out -- all his eye will be on the elimination of me. I wonder sometimes if that wasn't a part of the diplomacy of S. S. -- if he didn't realize that we'd both keep our eyes on each other, close and constant. He has done things just as devious sometimes just

for the love of the doing. But at any rate, the whole object of Rob McClure on that desk will be the elimination of me from the firm.

I find now that he is plotting to get back into the house one Churchill, the original Office Politician, whom I managed to get fired last summer. If Churchill ever gets back, then I go. If we can only get the chief away on his vacation! There is office work screaming to be done, but all our time is wasted looking after him. We are only high class companions and not editors while he is on the field. Thank God, Mrs. McClure has learned to hate me. Last Thursday, she turned her back on me in public!

sunday morning.

I bought two books awhile ago, to read in my slender passages of
time on and off the desk. One was the French Revolution of Carlyle;
the other, "Diana of the Crossways." After a hard struggle of the will,
I gave over Meredith for the time. I have, on the contrary, been
devouring Carlyle with a joy tempered by his attitude that you know,
of course, all about the men and the events of which he writes; that he
is only a commentator pointing the way, interpreting. Some time, when
there is less to puzzle the mind, I shall set myself
again to Meredith. But I swear just now that I will do no reading which
is not joy.

In a way, very dimly and amorphically, I am coming to comprehend
the thing which you call subtlety; it is a growth of this atmosphere
in which I live -- unhealthily Jesuitical, full of lies and deceits,
performing its heroisms and its sacrifices even through devious and
indirect ways, so that the thing which is hidden today becomes of the
greatest importance tomorrow. Then, too, there are the operations of
our friends, the modern Jesuits -- the Christian Scientists. From
them, we have heard little of late, except a denial that the photo
which we publish as Mrs. Eddy's is that of Mrs. Eddy. Of that we have
no matter of doubt; it is the woman without retouching; but the denial
of this at the very outset of the game is going to be used by them to
discredit our whole game. That is a part of the hammering we will have
-- a glorious game. Already, I understand, the revelations of the World
have produced an effect on the rank and file. They are saying that the
principle is all right, but they are getting less and less prone to
stand for Mrs. Eddy. There is in this city a woman who stands only
second to Mrs. Eddy in her power in the church, Mrs Stetson

of the First Church in this city, an institution which makes you think
of one of those eighteenth century Jesuit monasteries, so heavy is it
with intrigue, with plots to wring out money on death beds, with pious
lies, with spy-systems. Mrs. Stetson hates Mrs. Eddy, and Mrs. Eddy
her. The real Eddyite church here is the second; and we understand
that the members are of the second church are declaring among them-
selves that Mrs. Stetson is a hypnotist and goes in for Malicious An-
imal Magnetism -- is Antichrist and the Devil in short. We may hasten
a pretty revolt. It is amusing to see how, in the church publications
Mrs. Stetson writes letters about the Dear Leader and Mrs. Eddy responds
by writing of Mrs Stetson as her Beloved Disciple. A Jesuitification
of that familiar feminine process, known to all machine humorists, of
Kiss and Knife!

Funny tales come to us all the time about the operations of Mrs
Stetson. She is so rich that it hurts, by the way, and she is reputed
to be unco friendly with Arthur Brisbane; hence the fact that the
Journal is going to be against us, which is a good thing. They heal
mental defects in that church first, declaring that when the mind is
cleared of hate and all other errors, the body will follow. Some time
ago, they started to treat a rich man of these diabolical things for some slight
disorders resulting from a sedentary life. They found that the real
trouble with him was stinginess; when he gave more to the church, he
would be healed in body; and for stinginess they treated with great
material results and much spiritual uplift. Whether his body was
healed remains to be seen.

I think, on the whole, that we are going to have much less trouble
than we thought at first. The World has been so much more fierce than
we that I think it has taken the edge off of the fight.

Try as you will to rise to the abstract in mind, you must govern
yourself a little by formulas. There is much virtue in a motto. I'm
not sure but that a whole lot of the positive goods in Christianity come
from the fact that the bible is a book of mottoes. And now I find myself
getting the greatest benefit from a motto of Bernard Shaw. It is in
Caesar and Cleopatra that Caesar says:" Rsent it? Why should I resent
it? Why should I resent any force of human nature? I do not resent the
wind when it blows; I do not waste time resenting the rain; why should
I resent the sure forces of human passion? No, I buffet the winds,
I protect myself against the rain, and I take precautions against my
fellow man." This is expressed in many words from memory; but the
sense is there. This appeal dimly to memory; I am not sure that Caesar
himself is reported in the old histories to have said it. At any rate
he might have said it; the saying is native to him. And if I did
hear it before in the days when I read with eagerness every printed word
about the mightiest Julius, it slipped me because I was too young then
to undersatnd. But it has struck me with renewed force as the essence
of everything that we call nobility and magnanimity. Man is imperfect.
Woman is imperfect. They have their passions and their storms, as has
the weather; and when one meets those passions, when he gets in the way
of these storms, why should he hate and resent. I am not sure again
but that this very principle, carried out in action, is the reason for my
perfectly unreasoning love and admiration of Caesar. One feels this
in all his acts. If Shaw really made this saying for to put into the
mouth of the mightiest Julius, he is a greater artist with character than
I thought. You will pardon me for relapsing into a sermon.

Al Thomas, whom I go to onto the Sun as my successor, and whom they
sent to San Francisco, is sending some beautiful stuff to the Sun from

there. this morning they headed his story, "The City that Will Be."
For the lingering tribute of memory, I am greatful.

And now comes winter, joy of the worldly, enemy of green fileds.
I alarm myself when I think how much this world of work is with me,
how my heart is full of the cares of it, how little there is in me

just now that responds to green fields and all the high nobility
of mountains and forests. I imagine that I shall settle more and more
to be worldly, until all the sweet longing of forests seems to be gone;
and then, in some passage of the future as yet undreamed, I shall
get that long vacation which is coming more and more to be regarded
as the right of modern man somewhere about the middle of his work. And
then, I suppose, it will come over me again so strongly that I wonder
foolishly how I ever forgot it all for bricks and plasters and dreams
of ambition.

I am batting dimly at a story, but it doesn't come right; my imagin-
ation has no illuminating touches like yours. I am trying to translate
my story of the trainwreck and of the poor Smith who tried to die on
my shoulder (I think that you will remember the tale) into something like
fiction form. It is a most inartistic thing to do, I grant you; this
taking a real experience and saying "I will make a story", but it is
the only way for me just now.

There is a chance in it, I think, for a tale a little out of the
ruck of train-wreck stories. Which reminds me; as a proof that a writer
xxixxx loves best his lame ducks, I submit Mrs. Cutting. She
has early in her novel the story of a train wreck, which is very mechan-
ical and entirely like a hundred others. In talking about emethods of
cutting it down, she sticks strong for leaving that scene in. She
goes more proud of it than of any other thing in the book.

And now to make a little try at writing while the bright Sunday
lasts.

Billy Erb has gone West to Goldfield, where he expects of course
to make his eternal fortune, for two months or so. Rose is desoler.

Tuesday evening;

I napped on the sofa early last night, woke about eleven, and set
myself to reading The French Revolution to see whether I was going
to be sleepy again. I reached the place where they were leading out
the ci-devants one by one; the court officer would call their names;
they would embrace their friends and go, for none who went from that
huddled group in the prison ever came back. The thing had a grip on
me; you know how Carlyle grips when he comes to something a little
melodramatic like that. And being in this psychological state,
there came light footsteps up the stair. And lo, before me stood the
figure of Frank saying:

"Bill, I'm arrested!" It couldn't have come in a more dramatic
moment. It struck me like a bolt of electricity, with a heavy shud-
der. For the moment, I saw him led forth to the dungeon or the guil-
lotine.

I remember that I didn't ask him what he was arrested for, seeing
that he was wearing his auto clothe. "And me not there," I cried, "and
the Queen not there." "Bail!" cried Frank. "I want to take the
midnight to Boston. Got any money?" I had just four dollars. That
wouldn't do. I would rush to the club, if he would let me, and get the
mon. That wouldn't do. He had to have it at once. Maybe they would
take his auto. And down the stairs he clattered, into the arms of a
Traffic Squad man, who had him in tow. And away they went.

A quarter of an hour later, he was back. There was no use trying
for Boston. he had to go to court in the morning. I am the police
regulations, and let's get out of this. You could see all the time,

though, that G. Burgess was really enjoying the experience. I got my
hat and coat, leaped upon the tonneau, leaving the criminal and his
captor to the seats, and we wended our way to the Players. There,
by writing a check for the limit of credit and borrowing from Jesse
Lynch Williams, I raised the dough. The news passed down the Players,
and the gang came out to josh him and the traffic man. Frank had
been working to make the cop laugh. Not a grin could he draw. He was
the bromidest cop I ever saw. All he could see was that if G. B. didn't
get that cash bail in five minutes more, he would be spending the night
in jail.

But we bailed out, and spent a part of the rest of the night
fled from the reporters what to do when arrested. We didn't get a
great deal of information, and, in fact, the press pull helped us mighty
little to get into this thing -- for Frank is in the extent of
being held for trial before the Superior Court. He is, in short, out
on bail. Being in the police court at nine this morning, he and I waited
for two hours until the Justice, with a sweet slow smile, held Frank

for trial before Special Sessions. The last I saw of Frank today,
he had stepped out of the door of the court room into God's free sun-
light, a free man for two hours, while he found a property holder of the
state of New York to go his bond. When he sees you in Boston, he will
be a felon, out on bail.

I will not spoil the rest of the tale by trying to tell you about
it. He is coming to tell it to you first hand. Though bored by the
police court proceedings, he is in love with the experience!

I lean for a lawyer that he will get $25 and a reprimand.

I am sure coming up for Thanksgiving, I reckon. I shall, unless
I tell you different, arrive on the midnight (the train that leaves New
York at midnight I mean) and shall probably throw myself on your

Sunday morning;

Such a jag of sleep as I have just had! For I came back from
Boston with a cold, for which I began to dope myself with rhinitis.
Yesterday afternoon, I came back from lunch and started to read on
some Christian Science dope which I must get into my head. It must
have been about half past three when I fell asleep on the couch with an
overcoat draped over me. I remember waking at intervals to poke up
the fire and to take a rhinitis tablet. The next thing I know for sure
is that Forman was standing beside me making some of his malapropos re-
marks. This leads me to an observation: if you ever want to know just
what anyone thinks of you, catch him before he is wholly awake. The
control on the emotions is slow in asserting itself. This is recalled by
the fact that Forman touched his knee to mine and that I shuddered all
over as though a snake were crawling on me. The absolute physical
revulsion that I feel for that man is a caution.

Then I went out and ate a sandwich, crawled into bed, and
slept until seven this morning. Should you ask me why all this, I
should answer that I am making up for the earthquake tale and many and
any a night without a sleep in the days gone by. I really think that
this does account for the simple immoderation with which I sleep in these
days. I am getting ready for the next sleepless siege.

There came into my office yesterday a baronees somebody or another,
a foreign friend of the Chief. She is not a fake American Countess like
the Countess of the duenna episode, for she has a very pretty French
accent. She presented fourteen manuscripts, all of them hopeless I
take it, but in connection with them she told me something charming.

It appears that she and her half-grown children issue a house newspaper every week. It is done with the greatest seriousness. Nothing gets into its columns which happens outside of their four walls. There is the news of the week, of course, there are literary departments, and there is an editorial page upon which she, the mother, implants her ideas. It's a great little game, isn't it?

More and more I have been thinking of the six tales in the first person, three of which you were merciful enough to read to me. I fancy that with any luck at all you have a great step toward fortune in those six tales. It is almost a certainty that Reynolds will be able to sell them all together, probably to the Post. The idea of somewhere is just original enough -- the feminine O Henry -- to make an editor bite hard. And when they all come in a bunch, you will find yourself getting a crop of letters bidding up your prices. You listen and hear me prophecy. You've a winner there. Listen to me again. I bet you a dinner that out of the twenty tales you have written you make $2500 at least. In that, I am making allowance for the possibility that one or more of them won't sell at all. And come to think of it, I am not really a gentleman in this, for I am betting on a sure thing!

I see it a-comin' just as plain.

I am distinctly aware, dear madame, that having read so far, you will enter the objection that it is purely a commercial success that I am banking on for you. True. But one of the best things that could happen to you right now is a commercial success, because it would lead as sure as shooting to the artistic success which you are aiming at. When you have made a name for yourself by these colloquial tales which are commercial, then the bull-mouthed editors are going to listen to you when you go deeper. Oh, I'm the boy that's teaching my grandmother

to suck eggs!

Life is still full strenuous for me. The third Christian Science article is finished; it is for me to overhaul it today. That is a disagreeable task. It is just as full of prejudice and devoid of understanding as ever; and as ever, it makes me weep to think what it might have been made by a man of insight and of the greater view. Also, the McClure family, which is some day going to force me if not out of McClures at least out of the editorial chair, is on me like a pack of wolves. Mrs. McClure is crazy over that Nasimova dinner. She says that she should have been the hostess, and that Miss Cather and I, being mere employees, have been presumptious. I didn't tell you perhaps, that we were asked by the boss, almost commanded, to do this very thing; also that we fought against it as long as we could. The eternal McClure insistence upon intimacies! And now the Chief, having discovered how much money we are making, instead of preparing to sit tight and get ready to pay our debts is raging and roaring for a new magazine. To start a new magazine now would be to bring down our creditors on us with a bang.

I am just back from my bi-weekly Sunday morning visit to Majesty.
I found the Chiefest in all the Kingdom enjoying the luxury of a breakfast
in bed, she having now a servant who works partly for wages and partly
for the wholly inestimable privilege of serving. Majesty told me a tale
of great joyance about her friend in Washington, whom we will call,
as majesty does, Carrots. Carrots is a Burne-Jones girl with a mucker
twist. She has the neck, the look of haunting sadness and the great
eyes, together with the auburn hair and the pure complexion which goes

eyes, together with the auburn hair and the pure complexion which goes
therewith. Also she is tall and gracious. Inconsistently, she is
one of the cleverest women in business who breathes this upper air.
Being forced

one of the cleverest women in business who breathes this upper air.
Being forced ~~thereinto~~ by an alimonyless divorce, she started out with
a partner in the photo business. He being an operator, ran the photos,
and she did the business. She su cceeded in making herself so popular
in the quarters where business is to be had that she started a gallery in
San Francisco. The business branched out to sacramento and XXXXXXXXXXXX
Stockton. She got too large even for that and hiked to Washington for
the scalps of the senators. There, she is now the Only Thing in
photography.
Well, Carrots got married the other day -- secretly, because it

photography.
Well, Carrots got married the other day -- secretly, because it
might hurt the business if people knew. In order to make it secret,
she started, with the bridegroom under her arm, for Richmond. But on
the train there were a bunch of senators, and she found occasion to take
orders from them. Before she reached the town, she had them all on
her lists. Just as they were getting off at Richmond, she said:
"Goodness, Harry, We're here to get married, aren't we? --Just

her lists. Just as they were getting off at Richmond, she said:
"Goodness, Harry, We're here to get married, aren't we? --Just
hold the parson a few minutes like a good boy, while I wire back these
orders?"

This, it seems to me, is an admirable reverse English on the O
Henry tale about the broker who proposed to his stenographer the next
day after he married her.

Majesty has a French teacher who comes every Sunday morning. For
it is not befitting one in her exalted position to be ignorant of the
language of diplomacy. The teacher is a very tall and very handsome
French woman, and the only person I ever saw who has that peculiar
squareness of a red lower lip which is the characteristic of your moth
as against all other mouths. Which reminds me that I am trying to
get up the courage to tackle Spanish again.

It is a fair, cold day. Never a release now, never a sight of
growing things, for four months. Can you imagine the luxury of fields
growing and green all the year round? I am spoiled for weather.

And so to struggle with the hellish English of Burton J. Hendrick
and the Hellisher English of Will Irwin -- for my tasks on this Sabbath
are to rewrite the Christian Science article and to cut down Professor
Malino.

Sunday, 7 p m

Alas for work. For I had laid aside the enclosed sheets to you,
had cleaned up my table, and had spread out the documents before me,
had done no more than that -- when the door opened and there stood the
Boss. And I knew that I was elected to play the part of court enter-
tainer again. Worse than that, he came to bear me away to the house of
McClure to dinner. Oh, the Hell of a McClure dinner, from blessing to
soggy desert! I stuck it out until four, and tried to escape. But
the Boss said that he would go with me; and so, chatting merrily the
while, we went on through the park and ended by walking from Seventy
second street to Washington Square, where he tried to call on Miss
Cather. Perhaps she was out, or perhaps she saw us coming though the
front window; but at any rate, raps on her door brought no answer.
Then back we walked again. By that time, I had walked him hard and
fast and he was so tired that he was ready to take the Subway home. And
so the day went to Hell.

Tuesday, Dec. 4, 1906.

I am grown so weary of beginning these letters with
the news that there has been another upheaval in the office, that I
refrain almost from setting this down on paper; but behold the mountain
has labored again and the Chief has kicked everything into the fire.
He took a look at the second of the Christian Science articles -- and
behold, I am kicked off the desk to rewrite the whole thing after all --
a task I begged for five months ago, and which I might have done well
had I begun it then. My flesh crawls at what is coming!

Most heartily I adore the humors of the Boss. He said: "Now put
your whole mind on this. Take it easy. Get entire relaxation over Sat-
urday and Sunday. On these days, you and will go off together!" Rest!

I cannot convey to you the trouble, the infinite complexity of
this job as it stands now. Four months ago, I told the Chief that I
was the person for this job. He wouldn't listen to me. Now, I must take
it stale and tired, after it has been raked over so many, many times,
and without the necessary preparation and study. But it's to be done,
and one of the things that one learns on a newspaper is that there isn't
any limit to the powers of man. And so I'm digging into it -- I have
written myself stale tonight and am just getting ready to crawl into
bed. Mine is a poor state of mind for writing, since I am dead, and
I get back to the active management. Perchance the McClure's are
going to bring in the suitor of another daughter. And with these few
remarks I shall dismiss business to say that I've almost an idea for
a story buzzing in my brain.

George Ade and his slim princess gave me a merry hour last night. It is a plain, easy going tale, but it is a pity, I think, that in getting his facility George Ade has lost hold on that grip on realities which he used to have in his Fables In Slang. This thing is commercial And by the way, I learned the other day just why Jacques Putrelle's

story "The Gray Ghost" was sold to Everybody's. It was all ready to run, and was much approved in the office, when it fell afoul of Mrs.

McClure. "Heavens! Gambling!" she cried. And she stormed the Chief night and day until he got the tainted thing out of the office.

Of course, this tale is for plain, domestic consumption.

Also, there is another story of a story from which I heard the other day. When Miss Cather and I read over the tales in our collection we came across a frightful thing, about ten thousand words long, called: "The Sherriff of Bradley." It was certainly an awful tale -- cheap melodrama of the cheapest. It wasn't even plain, it wasn't even interesting, and it sounded like a story from the Prize Contest of the Petaluma High School. Seems to me that I won a ten dollar prize in school once on a tale that would give it cards and spades. We wondered -- and the next day, being in the act of making up a magazine, the Chief called long and loud for the S/ of B., which he said was a wonderful tale. We discreetly lost that story. He has been calling for it ever since, and we've been losing it in one way or another. Well, now it appears that he took that tale three years ago, and that every month since he has been clamoring for it. Once, they sent it back to the author, but the Chief wrote sub rosa and called it back to him. Some day, I have no doubt, he will slide it in.

December 13, 1906.

15-5

The end of another day, and me streaking again for dress clothes,
for tonight I skip to the banquet of the Quoin Club for to be bored
through a long evening. Then, on Saturday, I must go down to Wash-
ington to get busy at a Geographical Society banquet, where I hope
to cop out an article or so.

The dinner last night was not so horrible as my fancy painted. Mrs McClure did give orders that there was to be no booze or smoking; but Miss Roseborou caught the chief and made him bring on both white wine and smokes. Miss Roseboru smoked at the head of the table, to the open horror of the Middle West wives of the advertising men. You could see their eyes travel with the fascination of horror to the star performer.

But still the ever present piety of Mrs. McClure had its innings.
Just as we sat down, I saw the Chief and his Frau in vivid conference
over something. Then he rapped on the table: "Mrs. McClure will now
ask a blessing on this, our first gathering," he said. It was a good,
long, Presbyterian blessing, too, and it was of the kind that pains and
wounds.

My company at dinner, while passable, didn't do me any great good.
It was Mrs. George Kennan. There was a theatre party afterward; but she
broke away after the first act, and I had to go home to the hotel with
her and there drink a highball. She is about the most art ifical and
superficial person I ever saw troiling in a literary company. I went
to the bottom of her and took out all the works, and found nothing but
falsities.

For my many sins, I had to make a speech. It was sprung on me --
I had been understood that there was to be only one speech, when S. S.

McClure deeded the bromidic gold watch and chain to Rose, who has three watches already. But all of a sudden, he looked over and called me.

As usual, when confronted with the necessity of speaking on my feet, I grew hypnotized with the idea and couldn't say a word -- just stumble through an acknowledgement. Rose herself was in agony. She, simple and a lover of sincerity, must have grilled to her bones when the Chief talked ten minutes of hot air topped off with that watch. I want to see her as soon as I may and deliver that watch. hear her tell what she thought of the whole thing. It will be some great language.

Last night, Hallie wrote that she wanted to stay in Chicago to spend Christmas with her sister. She will have a good time there of the kind she likes, and it would be a little lonely for her here, so I told her to go ahead. She wants me to come out there for Christmas. That postpones the necessity of hunting for quarters. This will be my first visit to Washington. I'm planning to fall among the correspondents, to do some looking about on Sunday, and probably do a little work on Christian Science on Monday, seeing that I believe that there is a great mass of stuff in the Congressional. But think of three banquets in a week -- it seems to me to be the index to a great deal that is coming of boresomeness and weariness. I shall now boast. In all its existence, McClure's has striven to pass the half million mark. We have been jumping and jumping; and now it is almost a certainty, from preliminary surveys, that the Christian Science will outlive us in February. Of course, Christian Science does it; but I am the man who saw the possibilities of that rather unconsidered activity and put it through against the coolness of the Boss. But it is only being and being editor after all!

I'm strong for your beginnings in the last Ridgway's. O, to do that kind of work myself -- you are much envied of me. Stragge, wasn't it, that it came in the last week of the Burgess department? "Spend and lend and God will send," said G. B.; and I suppose that it is rather the best thing that it fell out from under him.

But oh, this is a dreadfully unnatural and artificial life we are living here -- so far from the pure sources of things, so far from the right kind of living; so sordid that we forget that there are stars,

if indeed stars dare to peep down the city canons. It has just occurred to me that New York is the most artificial city of the world, and that in this lies the repulsion of it to me. I think that the real spring of my love for Boston is the fact that the people of New England dare to be natural.

Here comes now Frank Gauss, who is to dress in my room, and I must go forth to boredom.

The copyists have had to knock off on Mrs Cutting's novel, and so I haven't been able to send it. I was waiting to send the French Revolution with it; but tomorrow I shall send it separately. Don't get discouraged with the long, rough passages at first. They are the settings to gems.

Friday, December 14, 1906.

Your row with Reynolds Arrived in my ken this evening through Frank, who came to talk over Moyle and others -- an occupation in which we were interrupted by the entrance of Percy Vincent Donavan, the British bard. I'm going to make inquiries about Moyle. As for Reynolds, your experience meets with mine -- I think that he is getting to be what Jim Dever the sage of Park row calls too XXX inde--God damn-pendent. He

has his eye on the big names abroad. Maybe a slippery person like Moyle might, if well watched, serve you well.

Today brought the eternal office troubles, but it was complicated by a great loss of temper and the inevitable weakness that follows a row without a scrap. In truth, my nerves are bad. It was with that red-headed Irishman, Jas B. Connely. Never in my life have I so wanted to thrash a man, but he insulted me with his wife right there and the only thing I could do was to turn my back and walk away. I didn't get over it all day. The spiritless and Semitic bander-log of New York kiss each other's hands when they insult, I find. Perhaps it is all right, but I was raised too far West of the Alleghenies. That is one of my kicks on New York. In Europe the duel. In the West, the gun. Here, they take it like dogs, and in Rome one has to do as the Romans.

I was never a lover of that man Connely anyway, and he can't write, although he gets into Scribner's picture book with regularity. And henceforth, McClure's will sever diplomatic relations with him.

Sometimes, in my introspective moments, I think that like the

George Ade shop girl, I have a strange nature.

The Quoin Club, composed of advertising men who entertain the deditors, gave a banquet last night -- I think I told you that I was going. It was rather more entertaining than the ordinary banquet, though I was seated dully enough between two advertising solicitors. But there was some real entertainment in the speeches, led by Sam Blythe, toast master. One of the advertising solicitors is a Chi Psi of Cornell, and he told me a great deal about the tragic and glorious episode of the house burning a few weeks ago. It appears that one of the men was swinging from the edge of a third story window, talking through the smoke to four of his fellows who were holding a blanket for him to jump. "Get further away from the wall," he yelled/"I am afraid that I'll hit a cornice." Then he jumped -- but close to the wall so that he hit square on the frozen ground. "I was afraid I'd fall on some of the fellows," he explained afterward, for he wasn't killed. The rest of the dinner part was a boredom of talk about the trade of geretting ads. My old friend Frank Lane from California was one of the speakers, and he made a hit by XXXXXXXXXXXX talking back to an advertising man who was roasting the editors for sensationalism and maintaining that they ought to consult the advertisers before putting anything in their publications. Also there was Peter Dunne, with whom I feel more at home than with any other celebrity whom I have met in New York. I think that with half a chance Dunne and I would become friends. Unheppily, he is in the Other Shop. There is something of a click of minds between us and we love the same things, I think. He has a face in every way brighter than his portraits, a face that falls into Celtic dimples and opens on an engaging smile of white teeth. We held a long after meeting.

The announcement this evening in the Players that I was going to Washington for to see the King brought forth some anecdotes of Roosevelt from Dick Barry and others that would indicate that the impulsiveness of the good King Theodore is assumed to cover up a deep craft. This is characteristic. Once, Baker wrote an article, Barry forgets which one, which trated pretty baldly with a Southern Senator, Barry also forgets which one. Baker had been down to see Theodore, and Theo had been asking for the mss. Baker let him see it; the President put on the mss several corrections, which Baker incorporated. A few weeks later, and just when they were about to put this mss on the press, Theodore called for Baker, sending him an invitation to luncheon, and asking him if he would bring the proof of the mss down with him. Baker accepted, of course. He found that five six senators and ministers were there, and that one of them was the very Southern senator mentioned in the article. It also happened that Baker sat across from the Senator at table.

In the midst of the meal, Roosevelt said with sudden impulsiveness: "By the way, Baker, did you bring down the mss?" Baker produced it. "See here, Senator, what Baker had written about you!". And then Teddy read it all off to him. Later, it appeared that Roosevelt wanted that Senator to know, about that very article as a warning in his impulsive Southern course. Another tale has it that Alice came in late one evening from some diplomatic function. "We were there any white men there?" asked Teddy. "White men?" enquired the third party to the conversation. "Sure," said Teddy. "There are two classes in Washington -- white men and diplomats." If I were to stay more than two or three days, I should get some of the correspondents to take me over to see Theodore face to face.

I'm going to look further into Moyle. The agent who gets you now
and does well by you will have a prize; and in two years Reynolds will
be striving to get you back on his string!

Now to read some manuscipt. It has been an age since anyone but
Gibbon sent anythisg worth printing to McClure's magazine. Mrs .
Gillmore, we must really have you among our contributors again.'

158

Tuesday Dec 18, 1906.

Always have I heard of Washington as the prettiest city for layout
and mere conventional beauty in the country. But my observation of it
was slender. I am almost ashamed to say that I saw nothing but the
externals of the government buildings and the inside of the Congressional
Library where I put in some mighty licks.

I sincerely hope that the good Recording Angel will put it to my
credit that I didn't even follow the delights of covers rare and quaint
and delightful volumes, there for the seeing. No, all Sunday afternoon
and all Monday, including the evening, I dug and delved in the great mine
of information on Mary Baker Eddy which I knew to be there and
which I found mightily productive. I hardly stopped to eat, just for
the delight of buckling down to some real work undisturbed by the
chance caller and the ravings of the Boss.

On Sunday night my way was gladdened by two old friends -- Max Farand, professor of history at Stanford, and Bristow Adams with whom I was in college.

Upon Adams I shall touch later. Farand is a man in himself. He
came to Stanford from Princeton at the very time when the puritanical
spasm in the Faculty was at its worst. He started in to do as he
damn pleased. He drank beer if it liked him; also without parade he
said what he thought of everything. He had a quiet popularity -- none
of your whoop ups, but the tribute that men pay to a man. Other men who
opposed them the Indiana gang got rid of, but they never dared do anything
to Max.

The alumni who linger about the college, coming down for Sunday trips, came to notice a difference in the attitude of their place. Braced

and aided by their opinion, the human members of the faculty began to
dare to speak their minds. And he has done it without the slightest
symptom of grand stand playing -- just simply by the weight of a
quietly strong and sane personality. His strength lies mainly in the
fact that he had nothing to ask for, and was trying to get nothing.
Because Fortune pursues those who flee her, he climbed to be the head
of the History department in three years, through the dropping out of
the men above him.

He took me out to the Congressional Library on Sunday. There, he
introduced me to the head of the whole works, and also to the bibliograph
er. When they found whence I came, they got in and did all they knew how
-- simply turned the place inside out. Having the chance, I buckled
down a small and did an ordinary week's work, aided by half their assistants,
in a day and a half. And oh, the goods that I got on Mary -- the
suppressed books and pamphlets which she has succeeded in getting
out of the hands of her followers but which she couldn't separate from
the copyright division of the United States government. I pause to
tell of one of the richest things. But there is an ass named Judge Hanna
who is her official biographer. There was a time when he was a great deal
wilder than he is now, and the first edition of his biography was supres-
sed. He tells in one place how little Mary, being aged seven, used
to creep out to her father's pig pen in the twilight and there croon the
pigs to sleep, cuddling with her chubby arms those dumb animals. "Does
this not?" he asks, "Prefigure the unselfishness which has marked her
whole life?"

I find that I am getting ahead of the tale. You know that I went
down to the Geographical Society dinner to Peary. That C. S. dinner

is one of the super dull affairs of the year. Willis Moore, head of the Weather Bureau, and one of the most stupid and nasty officials in the government service, always presides, and his speeches make a fourth of July oration seem moderate and a patent office report snappy. Then Peary always speaks xxxxx unless he is grabbing for the Pole, and there was never such an earnest deliverer of platitudes about an interesting subject as Peary. We had a lot of them. Cook, who ascended Mount McKinley, xxx seemed about to get off something of interest, but just as he swung into his space Graham Bell held up his hand and said, "The President," and in came Teddy, to moderate Washington applause, to present a medal to Peary and to deliver a sundry toothsome platitudes about the flag floating over the Pole. That was about all I heard that there was to the official part; but xxxxxxxxxxxx (there are nights when it seems impossible for me to hit a typewriter straight; this is one of them) about the stars and stripes, the unofficial part was interesting. On the seating program, I found that Miss Perkins was at my right. Judge of my joy to find that I had drawn the daugh er of the senior Senator from California. Pansy Perkins is about twenty and the kind of American girl that the British put in novels. She isn't at all typically Californian; she is xxxxx, typically Okifernian xxxxxxxx American and girl. It appears that she is the social head of the household; and her back stairs view of things, together with her tale of the trials and tribulations of a Diplomatic Life, was great and joyous. "But I can stand it all," she said, "Until Papa invites the California delegation to dinner. Then is when I throw up my hands." It was interesting, too, to hear her back stairs view

of Teddy. You know that official Washington hates Teddy. You might
have known it from the slender applause that he got when he came in.
To her, Teddy is the great big person that never treats papa and his
peers right -- that kicks over everything they want to do. She regards
him as the loyal daughter of a workingman regards the Trusts. He's the
fly in the ointment, the incubus. I have failed to hear one good
word of Teddy in all this trip. Washington certainly doesn't like him.
I don't know but that is a good sign.

Monday night, before I dug out on the midnight train, I dropped into
the newspaper offices and had a little chatter with the correspondents,
notably Sam Blythe who entertained me with some tales about Ridgway's,
the eternal subject now in a magazine conferences. He told me that
Ridgway had offered the job of editor to Rosevelt! He was to pay

Teddy fifty thousand dollars a year, to be started right away and
to be a retainer until after the end of the term. Teddy waved it away,
but the gossip is that he will do something of that very sort after
he goes out of office. His weakness, you know, is his vanity about
his writings, and he is really bitten by the journalistic bug. Sam
thinks that he'll be editor of the North American Review or something
like that.

And so, as I came in to get my bag out of the New Willard
and pay one of those exorbitant hotel bills, in came Anna Strunsky
and her new made husband. It is typical of Anna that although she has
been in New York for six weeks and has never dropped me a word to
say that she wasn't in town, she rushed up to me and kissed me! Right
before the groom and the whole lobby of the Willard.

I saw just enough of Washington to make me want to see more of it.
Next time, I shall watch Congress in session and even winness the proce

sion of the Supreme Court.

And there was nothing I saw that did me greater good than that
library of Congress. It was so great and so well ordered, and done with
such a real and loving care for the nobility of books! It gave me a
sober pride in belonging to a young people who can carry out such a
thing so well.

Although It is doubtful if I can cEMEX go on to Chicago for
Christmas, it is also, nāt impossible, but unadvisable, for me to go on
to your tree; and I will tell you fr ankly why. It will be wholly
impossible, owing to the present force of cirsumstances, for me to
go to Chicago for Christmas. You see, Miss Cather will be away at that
time seeing her father through an operation from which there is no great
chance of his recovery. Miss Bray will be off on a vacation, and just
the day before Christmas out comes the January number with the Christian
Science story and the beginning of the real fight. The place will have
to be covered, and the Boss is no man to do it. But to go to Chicago
would take three or four days, not just Christmas.

To go to Boston to Maude's tree and redeem my reputation for
sobriety would take only one day. But if I went to your tree and not to
their's, I would never be able to make them understand it; in short, I'd
make trouble in the family! So I'm going to deny myself both and stay
at home, probably dodging an invitation from the loathly McClure family.

I'm very short on sleep and will now turn in. I hope that in your
next you will give a full and complete description of that hat!

Wednesday night.

This day has been sacred to the genius of Christmas. For I have put in the greater part of it raking the stores in a task to which I am imperfectly adapted. I think that I shall send all the Haynes and Gillmore presents up by Paul and Daisy. All except Rufus's, which I will come probably separately by express, and is to be opened before Christmas at his peril. By the way, does Rufus know that they are going to start up a new financial journal in Boston? The man who is to run it has written to me asking me to get him two reporters. If he doesn't know, I will tell him all I know. It wasn't told to me in confidence.

Tonight, I dined in the midst of Langdon Mitchell, the man who wrote the New York Idea for Mrs. Fiske, and is, in his private person, a man of the greatest intelligence. At the Club of course. The Players now rides in its hey day. It is the Mermaid of New York. Among those whom I met at luncheon and dinner today are Stewart Edward White, this man Mitchell, Richard Barry, Francis Wilson, my brother and Bronson Howard. The tales come so fast that each one blots out the last; of two or three I remember, I said, "I will set this down for Santa Ynez." Then would come another and wipe it off, until the only one I remember is not for the Ears of Refinement.

The Chief, damn him, prevented my going up to New England in the vicinity of Boston by going himself today. He found that there was to be some searching, and he started out to do it himself -- anything to get away from that family! That family has invited me to its Christmas dinner. I lied and said that I was going out of the city. I shall have to hide in the Club all day to prevent the Chief from

coming around here and nailing the lie -- an Exile's Christmas.'
The whole tale of our relations to my sulphitic Boss is simply too funny to print.

One of those tales now remembers itself to me. General Otis is the militant, scrapping, union-hating, individual, and vain proprietor of the Los Angeles Times. He is a great man in Western journ alism. His one fault is that he can't write. The men under him try as hard to keep his stuff out of the paper as we try to keep S. S. McClure from giving his whole business away. Of lat years, he has taken to palying up his the work of his star men on star events on his own front page under his own signature. He'll go to a great political convention and take along a reporter. The reporter will write the tale under the direction of the Boss and it will come out in the morning under the name of Harrison Grey Otis. Of late years, the men under him have been suspecting that He really believes that he writes these things.

Barry went with him to Washington and Buffalo when McKinley lay dying. From there, Barry wrote the customary Otis stuff. When McKinley died, Otis called on Barry for a sentimental editorial. Barry, knowing what his Chief liked, wallowed in gooey sentiment for 1500 words. It was printed with a border of reversed flags all over the front page of the Times, and it made quite a hit in Los Angeles. Three weeks later, Barry said to Otis:

"General, that was a great story, a most affecting story, you wrote on the death of McKinley. Everyone is talking about it."

"Thank you Barry," responded the touched General. "It was written from a full heart. Tears were dropping on the page as I wrote!" And Barry says that the old sinner never batted an eyelash.

Friday December 21, 1906.

I sat and talked for a space with Stewart Edward White and Sam Adams tonight. After that, Sam and I played a rotten game of pool, in which the only consolation was that I was a little worse than Sam, who is one of the worst ever.

White is one of the sweetest and kindest men I have met of late. Very grave but also full of quiet quips and jokes, he has the psychology of his own Westerners. He has a fund of tales, which he tells with the dry humor that belongs west of the mountains. I think I've told you of him before. I'd like, if the chance offered, to add him to the number of my friends. He and Sam Adams are inseperable chums, and I think that there is some kind of a plan for them to live together. In California when Sam retires to write those great works of which every literary person dreams.

Not for a very long time have I been sobered as I was today by Mr. Woodrow. She came in full of zeal and anger to tell me of the sins of the McClure firm for the ages and ages past. She swept us all into the melting pot, me among them, and the lashing I got was something frightful I pause to say that Mrs. Woodrow is a pretty little blonde, and that when she gets as mad as she got today her eyes are dewy and her cheeks a bright vermilion, also her lips; so that she is a pretty thing. Watching her was so much fun that I forgot to be mad, so that when she had herself poured out she got rather apologetic; and as she left she hoped that it wouldn't make any difference in our being friends. "Not at all," said I, "You eyes are too attractive when you are mad." Now, the query is, did this remark please or displease the lady? Stand up and answer for your sex. Would this remark produce the same reaction in some women?

Or are there basic differences in different women which would produce different reactions? You will please write out a full opinion.

Before I forget it: I have bought a Christmas present for Rufus which is coming on by express, but in this season of the year the express companies are lax, and there is a good chance that the old thing will not get there in time. So if it doesn't, tell Rufus to abide in patience, for it will get there in time. Something for you is coming byMASY for the tree, where, alas, I shall not be. Asa matter of fact, I am going to spend a good part of the day in the office. For the Christian Science stuff will be on the street in the morning, and on that day of days they may clap an injunction on us, wherefore there should be someone about. I have dodged a ghastly mcClure invitation to dinner, and shall probably dine at the Players. Miss Cather, Miss Roseboro and I will probably foregather on Christmas eve to have a homesick time.

This last letter of yours, the one about the ligtshot lady of the wondrous youth and experience, is one of the greatest you ever sent me. How you make her live! That was a ral Christmas gift, that letter. It is bracketed with that wonderful half page you wrote me upon your philosophy of age and youth. How you can write when you are fit!

And if colds and smashed noses and other trials of the flesh are not enough to make anyone unfit. You leave that smash on the nose just at the most anxious part. Did it really do you up? Did it really black your eyes? As one who has fit and fit with and without the gloves and also played football and had cartilage displaced, I know that there is nothing which hurts more sickeningly than a crack on the nose.

Of Hinton it is hard for me to talk, having seen him only through one lunch. He struck me as a dreamer of the intellect, just such a man

such a thing as the fourth dimension. He is deeply read in philosophy, but he sees a great deal in Mrs Eddy; he is high in Science (real science) but he uses his knowledge playing with a baseball gun, and the like. I don't need to tell you that this constitutes a charm for me, this tendency to love these things for themselves and not their results, and to follow down the squirrel tracks of his knowledge without thought of the KENNEDYXXX profits. He struck me as a little cold and probably uncomprehending emotionally; but after all he is English and there is always something deep-lying in an Englishman which denies the surface/ Indeed, Frank has the talent above any other man I know of gaining winderful friends. He has the genius of friendship. Frank dropped in on me for a minute just before he dug out for Boston. He seemed to feel a little blue after the falling off of his job.

I dropped in on the Sun a minute today. Chester Lord said:

"I want to show you something that is very, very private." Then he drew from his drawer the photograph of an imperial twenty-story building, o'ertopping the tall dome of the World. It is the new

Sun Building. There was a queer mixture of pride and regret in him. To see the old building go down, the one gone where he has labored for thirty-four years, the one that been haunted and infested by more brains than any other building in the country -- really, we will all be blue when we see it go. It is the last of the real, old newspaper shops. Now the Sun, like the rest, will dwell in modern offices, and they will Fire men who Drink. The world do move. We're planning to take possession of the old shell the last night before they leave it, and to give a party such as will make the old place glad to die.

I can tell you off the bat what would disillusionize me fastest in a good woman, or at least a decent one, for it has disillusionized me

often enough. It is small spite. When that breaks out in woman, and
still more when it breaks out in man -- pouf! it is all off with that
person from this time forth. And next after that, flagrant indelicacy
I suppose.

By the way -- you saw the Police Gazette just in time -- for last
week, the old building together with the painting of John L. Sullivan and
the portrait of Richard K. Fox and the diamond belt burned to the ground
taking a number of firemen with it.

And now to bed -- at least I have got off and away every single
Christmas gift and am ready for the amenities of the season.

Christmas Day, Dec 25, 1906.

At this moment -- it is now seven o'clock of the evening -- I am wondering if Maud's Christmas dinner is going according to schedule and if the men folks are as full of good, alcoholic cheer as they were along with me on Thanksgiving. I have just dined at the Players among the actor gang. There wasn't a soul I knew, and the men who fed to right and left seemed to have an aversion to extending their acquaintance in my direction.

Is there any human insides and bowels to an actor, I wonder? I've caught a human gleam in an actress now and then, but never in an actor -- excepting just one who wasn't a success. These actors tonight were undoubtedly successes. Then one to my right actually stared at me when I addressed him.

The exact spot where my Christmas festivities commenced was one door away from Frank's rooms on Washington Square. Miss Cather had accepted the invitation of the McClures to Christmas dinner, thus carrying it through in rotation, for I martyred myself to their last tea while she renigged. She was mourning because she would have a long and stupid Christmas, when Rose and I fell in with her and agreed to spend Christmas Eve with her. So we met and began Christmas carolling at five o'clock.

Old Martin's probably you know. It was there we foregathered for dinner and something of a time. Rose, I regret to say, found that the cocktail and the white wine mixed too much, but she carried it like a lady and we had a convivial little time. It lasted through the rest of the evening in Miss Cather's place.

Miss Cather and I are never quite at ease alone in the company of one another. Mainly I find that we feel about the one mind for the

homewhat padded decadent philosophy of Willa Cather, the other for the bald and primitive philosophy of Will Irwin. We don't really click. But Rose, who is at home with both of us, forms something of a bridge between us, and the talk of the evening ranged from personalities to philosophy and back to the shop again.

And this morning, having risen and taken a walk, I went to pay my respects to the Queen, whom I found the Queen of old and always a de-light. Then up to breakfast at noon with Miss Roseboro, who was not available for dinner because she is dining tonight with Kitty Hall. It resolved itself, of course, into a spreading talk fest, which lasted until four of the clock. Followed then the dinner at the Players, of which I have told you. And now I am here where the fire is lighted and rather glad, since I cannot have the company I want, to be alone.

I have omitted the most important part of the day's festivities. I saved out your package to open today; and the book came this morning. That I thank you, and that they both hit the eye of the bull, goes without saying.

Reproach me not for that I have shopped too much for the Haynes family. It is true that I abominate Christmas shopping: but it had to be done for the spreading family in law, and this part of it was no extra burden. As a matter of fact, Willa Cather helped me out a heap by going along. She explained that if I was sick she would probably not nurse me, but that distress of mine appealed to her and she helped out. It is my hope that you will like the Rise of the Dutch Republic as much as I do. I peeped into it; I haven't read it since I was in the High School, and the page about the natavians, where I open-

ed it, set me all agog to read again. Did you ever get The
French Revolution which I mailed you?

You are hereby appointed magazine reader in chief to this Highbrow.
He disagrees with you on a matter of personal taste the first thing.
The Second Class Passejger I liked and admired but did not love; the
Man Who Knew I simply love. It seems to me the greatest thing that
Percival Gibbon has done -- the greatest at least for my tastes. I
am aware that I am probably showing my deficiencies in this; but so it
stands and must stand. They say in the office that the Second Class
Passenger is subtle; probably that is what is the matter; but for my
wn
tastes I prefer the man Who Knew and even consider it greater because it
takes a master to be as simple as that.

I haven't read that stuff in the Saturday Evening Post, but shall
haste to do so. Provided I can get my hands on a copy.

Rose indulged today in a little family history -- a thing she
does but seldom. It appears that her father and mothers were both of the
slave holding class in the South. Her father, however, was a minister
of the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination, and he freed his own
slaves after he married -- for her mother, although Southern of the
Southrons, hated slavery. And the reason of it is this: Virginia was
the breeding ground for slaves; it was where the great slave fortunes
were made -- just breeding them as one would cattle. Miss Roseboro's
mother as a little girl lived on the road from Virginia down to the
Louisiana plantations where they sent them for the hardest work -- you
probably know what beging sold down the river means. All through her
childhood, she saw the caravans of the hopeless pass, and saw what they
did to them -- so that in her secret heart she always knew that Uncle
Tom's Cabin was true. Then, when she married and went to Saint Joseph

to live, she saw a nigger baby of three, crying for its mammy, sold on
the block. She conceived a hatred and loathing for slavery deeper than
any loathing they felt in Massachusetts. When the war came, they took
the union side of course. Rose remembers that when Fort Sumpter was fired
on her mother said, "Thank God, it is the end of slavery!" They had to
be smuggled out of Missouri by night because her father's neighbors were
after him to hang him. After that he served four years on the union
side. Rose says that when her mother was dying she said: "Well, I
shouldn't complain. The Lord spared me to see the end of slavery."
One of the finest things about her is the fact that she sees so clearly
both sides of this grace question; I have always noted that, and now I know
the reason why.

The fact that Virginia, whereupon we have always looked as the
flower of the slave system, was the great slave breeding ground, is all
news to me. Rose says that therein lay the foundations of the Virgin-
ia fortunes. At one time, she says, the Virginia statesmen helped
fight the slave trade -- not because they were against it but because
it acted as a kind of a protective tariff for them to have no slaves
imported.

XXXXXX She and I agreed that there is a great piece
of work for some historian of courage in that History of Slavery
in the United States which was never written.

This will arrive on the day after Christmas -- in the cold,
gray dawn of the morning after. A merry after-Christmas to you,
excellent madame. I think now that I hear your Christmas laughter
come over from Boston.

Thursday Dec 27, 1906.

In all my days on McClure's, I have never been so full of affairs
as I have today. I simply turned S. S. out of the place and plugged
into work, real work, the kind that makes things go. Full many a
little hope I crushed by a line together with a rejected mss. Full many
an aspirant for an editorial position I nipped in the bud. I am all
cleaned up, regardless of the departure of Miss Bray the efficient, and
ready for another day with S. S., listening to his giddy moonshine.
That place oppresses me sometimes with a sense of terrible responsibility
The days of the reason of S. S. McClure are numbered. When, after days
and days and months and months of follies, he sinks into the grave or
the madhouse, it is going to be up to me -- if I am there still --
to stand between the wreck of that business and the wrath of the wolves
who will try to rend it apart. There will be drama in the situation;
for I shall then be the safeguard and ally of Mrs. McClure, the narrow,
unsympathic Puritan whom I like less than half of the people who are
trying to tear it apart.

Only this thought -- of the romance in it, the unusual thing to
be done -- keeps me to it on some of the bad days when I am forced into
false positions and driven to use my tact to cover up the follies of the
strange old man, flower once of his generation and now a pod, for whose
sons and daughters I am laboring against him.

You would surely love to see him on one of his bright and rampantous
days, tilting at windmills, throwing out a line of talk which wastes
itself on the brightai r but which glitters, too, like sunbeams on that

air. Bad and gentleman, genius and fool, warrior and recreant, liar and holder of great truth, babbler and wizard -- surely no man had ever the cleek of darkness like th a same McClure -- the wand of transformation. And so I hate him where I love him and loath him where I admire him. Had he been born with the mental muscle to fight and conquer the power which worked within him, there is no measure to what he might have done. Lack of control has been the ruin of him. He has been like a piece of machinery loose and threshing itself to pieces -- the greater the power in the engines, the greater the destruction.

I have just been looking over our contemporary the American, and regret with a genuine regret that our friend George Madden Martin of Emmy Lou has fallen down on the second chapter of Letitia. Or do you think so? The first, with the tale of the simple striker giving the little girl a bath, is as pretty as it can be and live; but the present instalment doesn't get there. She isn't any good in polemics I take it. By the way, I heard it whispered the other day that Mrs. Martin like Peter Pan, never grew up -- physically I mean.

I had the unmeasurable and unquenchable delight today of lining out to Miss Peixotto my views on the relation of talk to letters. She is about the most naive person as regards the literary art of anyone who ever tackled the short story. She made the remark, the first time she ever came in to see us, that story number 1 was probably inferior to story number 2 because number 2 really happened while she made up a lot of number 1. So, she has been vastly impatient over Rose's comments and revisions of her stories, and especially because a lot of the hells and damsn have been cut out -- not as a concession to taste of the public and Mrs. McClure I pause to state, but because she

a swear word isn't a climax and too many climaxes are inartistic.
She retorted by mail with a great deal of heat that the men really said
hell and damn all the time, and therefore it ought to go in. That
permitted me to write to the extent of about four pages my opinion
on the difference of media between talk and writing. I'd love to
have you collaborate with me in working over the writing of this
clever and hustling little Jewess. She hasn't the first idea of art
and she writes with a crudeness that sometimes apalls; but through it
all, every word she writes, every idea she has, is pleasing. She
has a personality in her writing as definite as the great gift of
personality in life. It is a most affording study in quality.

This talk of magazine shop reminds me that Ainslee's publishes
The Book Lady in February and on the same month Everybody's will come
out with the Coney Island tale. Twice in one month! Such a wonder.
And it is queer how these coming appearances in print have given me a
little confidence -- although not one of these tales is wholly my own.
The next time I take my pen in hand, it will be with some feeling that
I may turn out something.

When I see you again, I shall whisper in your ear the whole tale
of the photograph of Mrs. Eddy. It is a thing which I don't dare put
on paper even to you, so closely is the secret guarded. The first num-
ber has not been followed by the hammering we expected -- here I
knock umbereufen. Maybe they are waiting to hit us good and hard, and
maybe they are hauling in and getting ready for the World, which is to
pile into them again next Sunday -- perhaps with the news that I
whispered into your ear last time I was in Boston -- the one about
medial attendance.

And tomorrow I must rise and hunt for quarters -- a task at which
I am no more than an intelligent human being than I am at buying

Christmas presents. for the family is now L-n Washington and expects
to arrive next week, and I find myself as unprepared as though they
had sprung their coming on me suddenly. No one has a licence to
live on this岛 of Manhattan unless he has a fortune and nothing
in the world to do except to live. Just living is a career here in
New York.

I await with some impatience and not a little eclat the account of
the Christmas tree at Maud's.

By the way -- does Rufus want to know about the new financial
journal in Boston? Or does he already know more about it than I do?

Sunday;

I found something that will do as a place to lay our heads yesterday, thank God. It is Hatfield House, a family apartment hotel where Maida lived for a time last year, and where they bring up meals and serve them in your rooms. Therinto will I move of a Monday, leaving these blest old rooms with life burned into their panels. And this morning I made a special pilgrimage to have breakfast with Maud, paul and Daisy, and to hear about the Christmas tree and eke the tea. Madame, I am foolishly addicted to your company, but I doubt if even the company of a lady of your quality would have made up in me for myperfectlyfoolsthin terror of a tea. Why a few tea things, some good frocks and a little conversation should turn me into such a rabid hater of the feminine sex I do not know, I cannot guess. I have tried to analyze it; and my hatred for teas boils down to this. There is between man and womanwhat I might call for want of a better name the duel of love. Love between the sexes ( and all relations between the sexes are tuned to the fiddle of love; every jolly you give a girl is a love affair in shadow) resolves itself more often than one knows until he stops to analyze it, into a flight between the sexes. There is at the beginning of half the love affairs I have ever known intimately, a little feeling of pique that the other person with his or her damned sex should be forging shackles. I think that Shakespere expressed it morefully than any other author I know; obviously he showed it in Much Ado, and more delicately and with more hidden meaning in the sonnets. The form of the antagonism most often takes the form of a resentment; and that is what I feel toward teas -- a resentment. Here is a function wholly feminine. There is not a thing about it which lures

me except the presence of women there -- and usually I am going under
the orders of some woman as for example the boss's wife -- and there
arises that sex antagonism. I suppose that this is as near a self-
searching act as any Westerner never dared get!

Which leads me to correct a scandal which you have been circulating about me to me. You say apropos of the relation of me to the men at the Club that I must always find my deepest entertainment and interest in the society of men. That I repudiate wholly. I scorn to draw the line, intellectually, through the space between the sexes. When I meet a human being with a brain, with things to tell me, with a heart full of the emotions which I want to know -- what a degrading thing it is to be considering whether that person wears on his body certain physical peculiarities or certain other physical peculiarities. I'dxfxxxxx feel degraded if I considered every woman I met as a woman first. But between the sexes, there are certain burdensome littfe formalities to go through. You can't find women just when you want them; you can't drop in on them casually; you can't, except at functions where the intercourse is purely superficial, meet them en masse and pick out the ones you want to know and to talk to. The whole trouble with society just now is that it takes for granted that every contact between the sexes is a preliminary to amorous advances; that society is a great marriage bureau. But you can get at men without any of the formalities of convention; can know them as they are with only the slightest trouble. There. Now will you be good.

Yesterday, the same being Saturday, I had a glorious man time --
a luncheon with my friend Griggs, Huebsch, Nolan(a rather tame landscape
architect of Boston), Leonard Abbott, and Professor Earl Barnes.

I don't know whether Barnes like Griggs has invaded Boston with his high-brow lectures. He has been working abroad for some time. I knew him at Stanford, when he was an professor there -- a virile, strong, popular personality, rather too conventional and superficial in his thought and far too popular with the school ma'am special. Probably I have told you of the strange marriage of him and Mary Sheldon Barnes, martyr among women; if not, there is a tale for you. He has been living abroad, as I have said, and seems to have mixed a great deal among the Sunday Supplement feature kind of people. He has seen a great deal of Prince Krapotkin for example, and he says that he is a male Anna Strunsky. He had many a good take of him to tell. Then there was Abbott, a Socialist of the extreme type, and with a face and look that goes with it -- I can imagine a gushing girl novelist making him the hero of a Socialist novel, for he is dark and smoothly handsome with a pair of fine, fiery eyes which radiate idealism. At one stage

of the game the talk turned upon Corky, and Abbott split the table in two, defending him and his actress friend. We drank much and talked with a great deal of freedom of all things from the philosophy of Kant to the trials of magazine editors and popular lecturers. Of Griggs I hold two opinions -- personal and intellectual. On his personal side he is the good friend, the brother in trouble and the consoler in misfortune, together with the companion of happy days. On his intellectual side, he is what some one in Boston has called him -- "the prophet of the perfectly obvious." He's sure a bromide intellectually, though a strong and intelligent bromide, but he's a sulphite on his personal side.

An impulse is on me now which I take shame and pity that I cannot yield to it. I want to write poetry! It's a seemed to me these last few

days -- which have been full of the world and its forbidden love --
that I desire nothing more than to get alone by myself for a week and
let my pen sing. That impulse toward verse MXXKXXXX comes over me at
the queerest times, and for the time being I believe that I am a poet
in spite of my verses turning state's evidence against me to show that
I am none!

And out of this great, gray mood of the olden Gods, I must go
to dinner with the McClures! Alas the day! But it's up to me, for
Miss Cather and I are dividing the burden of these eternal intimacies
and this is my turn!

About that financial journal -- it is King's. It is designed I
believe to be a kind of a financial New York Journal, with sen-
sational stories every day and all kinds of investigations and muck
rakings. Frank Davis, whom you may remember as having worked for the
Boston American and been down to Scitaute, is to be the managing
editor. He got me to find him a man or two here in New York, and he
is paying mighty good wages for Boston. That's all I know about it.

Daisy, these days, is looking too pretty to live! I have told
her so in the presence of her husband. If I can tear myself loose from
the McClures to-morrow, I am going to take Maud to the Eden Museum.
How seems it to you to have Phyllis in the house? Maud told me about
her emptying out all the 1906 pennies into her lap.

["Monday December 31 1906", "I'd love to have the time this morning to lay out for you the situation with which I shall be confronted when I get over to the office this morning. There is no time however; for I'm in the midst of getting ready to pack and follow. Sometime today, unless Hallie decides to remain in Washington at the last moment, I shall be meeting the train and getting a family established in a Swell Family Borading House.", "There flashed suddenly upon me from out my papers this morning a story which I wrote two years ago when I was living here with Frank. As I topped to glance over it this morning, it struck me that it is good enough for Munsey's at least, and I'm going to try to go through it this week and try out the results. I'm mad at you. Because you don't tell me whether Reynolds has sold any of the first six, or whether the Reynolds has been bounced by you, or any news at all from your making of tales. And if you don't tell me something of all this, I shan't bore you with my story. Mine is of Mission times in California and there is a Spanish girl in it whom I have tried to make likeable and adorable.", 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Tuesday morning (Or afternoon to you; it is morning to me at four)

I breakfast with Frank; I go back and sit down to write on the
Book Lady. There is a ring at the bell. A message from Ridgeway.

"Want to see you." I post to Everybody's. There is no Ridgeway.
He has been called out. Very sorry. That is the way things go these
days; it is a part of the perplexity and the difficulty of making up
one's mind. I heard you say once that Heaven always contradicted our
general assertions about ourselves. Verily, I believe it now. If
there is anything I have believed and aserted about myself it is that
I make quick and even reckless judgements; but here I am hesitating
like a biscuit shooter between a snappy drummer with elegant ties and
a warm, true, heart encased in a red short and adicky. The world is
is wan.

In the intervals of drinking waiting for Ridgeway, I sat
and drank a space with Billy Erb and a press agent and theatrical
manager person. He had a line of slang; as usual, I forget the
specific phrases. I wish I could hold a phonograph of those eph-
emeral talkers. I remember his telling of a timeout in Detroit when
alittle weekly of the Town Topics persuasion roasted him with all-
too-true scandals. He went out on a drunk with a man who resented it.

"He gave me a revolver, and told me to blow the damn head of the
editor off. 'I'LL do that,' says I. So I took the gun, prepared to
welter in ink and gore, started for the office -- and fell asleep."
That isn't good either -- he was in the main a great deal better than
that. Frank has been meeting O Henry, and had an engagement to dine
with him this evening in the palace of the Queen. A singular person
is this O. H. I hear more and more tales about him every day.

Just as we are boarding the train to go on the Atlantic City trip
Lindsay Denison broke into uncontrollable laughter. "What is the
matter?" said I. "Nothing -- only this is Mary Heard's suit case --
Jack Cosgrave has got mine!" That struck me at the time as the
greatest in years. Denison says that there are x many even funnier
things which he cannot tell. Wait till he gets drunk. This thing has
really hit me harder than I would have thought. He is all right when
there is a crowd about, but there is a different face when he is
alone with me. The worst thing about it, and the thing which places
the woman in a tinged light, is the way it was broken to him. He
never knew it was going to happen until the day after. Two days before,
he had a letter from Montreal, where she was then, written in
just the old way. Dennie salves himself with the thought that she
had fits of extreme nervousness which amounted almost to insanity,
and that she did it in one of those. Probably it was sanity,
rather. At any rate, they'll be back in the middle of the summer,
and Lindsay trying to get the firm to send him to South America
on a roving commission. I imagine that the affair is not ended;
usually they don't end, like an old three decker, at the altar.

Tuesday night;

John Adams Thayer, the Thayer of the Ridgeway-Thayer Company, publishers of Everybody's Magazine, is popularly supposed to be the authorities on bounders, to be the penultimate limit. Late this afternoon, I got a telephone message from my old friend Franklin K. Lane, who tried to be governor of California three years ago. I wanted a talk out of him, quick, for the paper, since he is here in connection with raising funds to rebuild. He said that he wasn't in the office of everybody's, had an engagement to dine with Thayer, but would be there for a half an hour if I wanted to talk to him. We had our talk. Thayer came with his automobile to take him away, and I went down in the elevator with them. I asked Frank, as I left him, if he would care to be put up at the Players. He said that he didn't, as he was going to be here only three days. Then spoke the lordly Thayer:

"Oh, never mind, Mr. Irwin, I have three or four clubs at which I can put him up." Isn't that a corker, I told it a little later to Frank and O. Henry and those two great American humorists rolled it under their tongues with joy.

Yes, I died with the Queen, O. H., and Frank. O. Henry bought the food, not forgetting the wine, and we all drank, again O. Henry doing most of the work. He is a good person to be with now that I know him a little. He is shy, perhaps for reasons, perhaps from the natural shyness of that type of writer whose psychology lies deep down. But his shy jokes are as straight to the point as his tales. "What job shall I give you in the kingdom?" quoth the queen. "Butcher in ordinary," said O. Henry, cutting meat. He was beating eggs when he said out of a sea of musings:

"I never beat a rotten egg, I never want to beat one; But I can tell you anyhow, I'd rat her beat than beat one."

The impression of the tin horn gambler who sits calm, pleasant and watchful behind a faro table, always trying to be at ease but always spoiling it by his watchfulness -- that is the impression still.

A wonderful man, especially when you know what is back of it all. I have formed a theory about his present life.

They were an interesting triad, those three -- Isabel, Frank and Porter -- three apexes of a triangle. The evening was just running well when I had to pull out. Before I left, I told O. Henry something about what I was going to do, and he advised me strongly to try the McClure game.

Wednesday night;

Boyden, who was more or less the managing editor of McClure's, resigned today. So did Siddall, his assistant, and Baker, and the rest will go tomorrow. That means, I think, a definite break. They want to go ahead to establish a new publication, and they don't feel right in their consciences about doing it while still in McClure's. So in the morning, I shall go around to the old man and let him talk to me.

This news was conveyed this evening by Boyden, who had me to dinner in his house where he lives with three other Harvard men. One of them is a great old half back, though for the life of me I can't say what he is, his name at this moment. I had rather a pleasant dinner, and got on a regular talking jag wherein I monopolized conversation frightfully and had a touch of remorse for it afterward.

Boyden and I make the transfer with the greatest good feeling in the world. I like him, and he has acted like a gentleman and a man all through, offering me every bit of coaching he can give me and telling me a lot of the inside. It seems to be pretty certain that I shall break the little pencil now and make the transfer.

I was in on Sadi for awhile in the afternoon -- a day after telling Frank that I had cut Sadi out. But it happened that Percy Donavan is getting to be a burden; I want to find something for him to do; and I thought that she might help me if I could get her going. But Sadi wouldn't enthuse. She was in bed, trying to be sick or to rest.

Alice leaned over one side of the bed, and Therese reclined on the other.

So you can see that I was among the houris. When we were alone, Sadi threw much hot air at Isabel, and added:

"I told her that I had been like a drunken sailor, who had broken discipline and gone on a magnificent jag and woke up to find himself married -- and finds himself proud of his bride." Sadi means Isabel by the bride. But when the name of Isabel is mentioned, the eyes of Therese snap with cat lights, and Alice of the Arms draws down her upper lip.

I have officially closed the San Francisco spasm, by announcing to the desk that the service is restored. Now for two or three weeks of

Monday;

O damned doubts! I wish I knew where I would be six months
from now. For this morning comes a telephone call from Boyden,
one-time half managing editor of McDlure's, who had made an
engagement to dine with me next Wednesday night. He asked to
have me put it off until Thursday night, as there might be
"more to tell" then. He is the one among the insurgents
who has maintained that the thing might be patched up. If it
is patched up, then I am out of the job. I won't take public
Opinion if it is offered to me on a paltter of gold. That is
certain.

The job here is as dull as ditwater nowa. Nothing to do
except wait for telegrams to come in and bind together a tale which
is as stale for newspaper purposes, as dishwater, and which now
belongs to the magazines.

Perhaps even Boyden may decide to remain with the others
gone. In that case, it is a question whether he'd have the
chair or I. The Sun is persecuting me for an answer. It is
a queer passage. Never before was I wooed with jobs. I feel
like a young man in college whi has pledged hismsel to one
fraternity and is being rushed by all the others!

Thursday morning;

Well, it is done and past praying for. I am officially hired
by S. S. McClure as his managing editor, although I think on the low
down that there isn't much management to it. I couldn't beta him
above a hundred a week for the present; he says that he will give me a
raise later. I'm to edit half the time and write half the time -- my
work is laid out already. This is a secret amidst the Cambridge circle
of discreets. In the first place, I am to work over and edit a long
serial article on the Monatana Copper fued; after which I am to go to
Colorado and Idaho for a few weeks to do the assassination of Governor
Steunenberg and the events which preceded it and followed it. In
reality, I am pleased at this. Managing editor or no managing editor,
I get a chance to write and to get my name to things. I fa ncy that
Sam Adams and I will be the Steffins and Baker of the reorganization.
I am to go the first of June, and in the meantime I'm going to try to get
in a little vacation off toward the end so that I can be fit. No
time to write any more -- but it is definitely done, and I'm out of
the business.

Yours as always,

Will Irwin.

Thursday night;

Days off are a lost luxury in this, the last month of my newspapering.
I am still doing some mild plugging on the San Francisco trouble.
Today, the Associated Press sent out a bulletin about the trouble in
the McClure shop, and some of the reporters on the Associated Press
papers telephoned to me and tried to interview me! I was a cat in a
strange garret; and I did what the fool in being interviewed often does;
I talked too much and then, remembering myself, I pulled in and begged
them of their professional courtesy not to write what I said. That
disgusted them, as it has always disgusted me. But consider, this is
the first time I was ever interviewed.

The office took the news with some joshing. I have not yet seen
the Managing Editor, as he is not here today. Bendelari, the old cynic,
remarked that earthquakes have a peculiar effect on the human mind, and
he refers to muck-rakes every time I borrow a match from him.

Amazed to discover that the cubs want to know if there is any
chance on McClures. well, Heaven save us, since the first days of ostracism,
which had the virtue of keeping me from running regularly with the
Park Row gang, this has been a pleasant place to work, and barring
my thought that I was getting nowhere with it, the two years of
hard work on the Sun have been pleasant. It was just the feeling that
I was writing in water that'afflicted me.

By the way; what anecdote have I heard that I can tell you to illustrate
the nerve of the little man Simpson whose letter I sent you?
And isn't it a great letter from a great little man?

A new phase of life for Willie. Seven years ago this month, I
 got that delayed diploma and walked out to the world and the Wave. Six
 years ago this month, Cosgrave was sick and I was editor, manager and
 staff of writers on the Wave (I think I worked hard on this earthquake
 business, but I could never do that Wave job again; youth will be served.)
 Five years ago this month, I was just learning that I was a reporter.
 Four years ago this month, I was traveling over country roads in any
 conveyance. I could get, watching the reaping gangs get into action on

the great grain fields of the interior valleys of California. Three
years ago this month, having just finished my part of Queen Isyl,
I was just about learning how to run a Sunday Supplement. Two years
ago this month, I was preparing to get East and, in the closing months
of my service, when I was cleaning house for my successor, I was stealing
away into the telegraph room, deserted by day to murmur and swear over
the verses of The Hamadryads. One year ago this month, I was just
realizing that I really could write for the New York Sun. And here I am,
at the end of my days in the business. It really doesn't seem so long
when you count the years one by one. And how much I have managed to see
in two cities in that time! What corners of life!

I have just finished News and the Man. In its present form, it is a poor, melodramatic thing, as a noveled play must be. The interesting thing to me is the metamorphosis of Billy Woods in the change. In "The Stolen Story", I had a picture of him, a definite picture, in my mind. He was one of the old, hardened, cynical, and stuffy reporters with the genius of news; a Charlie Tyler, a Louis Whitcomb. Willi

for the exigencies of play writing, has changed him into a creature who never was, a figure of romance, this reporter who has saved a division, got the thanks of Parliament, written verses, done anonymously one of the six best sellers, and is willing to take off his coat and do a turn at Police Headquarters. But he had to leave the absent mindedness of the original Billy Woods in him and some of the traits of the original Billy Woods; and some of them don't fit. It isn't in Billy Woods number 2 that his spectacles should slip down on his nose all the time.

There are some good little bits of observation, though. There is one place where Billy is about to try to make the general talk. He will make him talk; he will find the right method, but he hasn't a single plan in his head; when he goes up against his man, the method will leap into his mind. I have known that process a thousand times; although I myself am not one of those reporters who shine because of any exceptional ability to get the news. Handling it is my lay.

You and I are rather beaten on the reporter who writes verse!

I liked, too, the way Williams made him forget the girl he loved, everything, forget even what she was saying, when the story came into his mind and when the scent got warm. There is nothing so absorbing in the world as that moment when you realize that the story is there before you and yours to get. But as I say, is a no-welized drama after all, and must of necessity seem melodramatic reduced to words. There has

been a lot of talk about the play. Lindsay Denison, John Corbin and
several others whom I know have seen it in rehearsal, and I've heard
a lot about it from them. They say that the third act, where the char-
acters do their funny stunts in the foyer of the Metropolitan Opera House,
will go down in Duluth but never in New York, which knows better.

But they say that the acts in the newspaper office, especially the
last where the stolen story episode comes in, are dandyes. Denison
and one or two other newspapee men went over those acts again and again
to get the atmosphere just right. Whether the public will like them is
another story.

It won't hit New York until Fall, but I believe that, after its
trial in Providence, it has gone to play Boston.

Saturday morning;

This tale came into the office yesterday afternoon:

About a fortnight ago, a man nurse named Ellers forged Wm. M.

Ivins's name to a check for $250. He was remanded to the Tombs to wait a trial. Now, according to the story, he had two little girls attending a public school in the Bronx. On the morning when the news of this arrest was published in the newspapers, the teacher read the filings to the class, and the two girls said that she was ashamed to know that she had children of such a father in her class. That was the first notice the little girls had of the arrest of their father. The father, from the Tombs, wrote a letter to Judge Foster, who had his case, and also to the school department. Judge Foster, seeing his chance to make a grand stand play (he is a self-advertising Tammany judge) write and made complaint to the school department, and there was the Dickens to pay. I found the office buzzing with indignation, and it was me to dip my pen in tempered vitriol.

I found that Judge Foster was locked up in a menorial service to another Tammany Judge. The officer at the door said that they wouldn't be out for an hour, and that there was no use trying to see the judge until he got that speech off his mind. Next the Board of education, a red-tape beaureaucracy. I saw the Secretary, the County Superintendant, the Chief Clerk, the Registrar. No news of such a case. At last, in the top of the building, I met with the Superintendent of the Bronx. He is a nice old Irishman.

"Now, me dear bye," said he, "Would ye suppose that I'd be givin' out information about a lady teacher that's in trouble?" I saw his point of view and parted friends with him. Then to the furthest Bronx, to see Mrs. Ellers and learn of the viliny of the teacher; after which there was the pleasant prospect of going to see the teacher and talking an arm off her in an effort to get her to commit herself -- always a pleasant thing to contemplate.

Waiting at the door of the Ellers house were two of my brethren of the yellow press. Mrs. Ellers came, a fat and calm German person.

"Dere ain't not in' to it," said she." Ven I seen dot Adolph was
doin' dis crooked business, I give it to him hard.
'suppose de teacher
reads out in school dot dose little Ellert girls is got a forcher for
a fader,' I says. An' dot damn fool, he t'ought I means it."
The
other men had seen the teacher. She never knew that the father of the
Eller girls had been arrested until an hour before, when a messenger f
from the school department rusheed in with a set of formal charges and
a suspension. She was dissolved in tears. So that was the end of
the tale and everyone felt better. Some of the veening papers took
Judge Foster's word for it and bit without investigation, and we are
wondering how much libel she will collect.

The later part of the evening, I loafed away about the Club. I
admit it to you; I just loafed with Gilbert White and a Briton mamed
Baker, and one Benrimo, a Californian actor who cantalk of a great many
things about the stage. Benrimo was the pipe bowl mender in that
great little Chinatown play, "The First Born," which is a classic in San
Francisco and little appreciated abroad. This man Benrimo, it
appears, is the son of a man who has hired Chinese all his life and
Benrimo the younger was brought up among them. He has that appreciat-
ion of the finesse and the gentleness of the Chinese which, I used to
think, made me a minority of one in San Francisco. He was full of good
tales about them. His family lost everything in the fire, and is coming
to live with him here, but he is taking it with that Californian cheer-
fulness which Simpson mentions in that bully letter which I hope you
enjoyed. Isn't he a straight, direct, energetic little man?

Benrimo has a sister; and they both volunteered to help out an
entertainment for the San Francisco sufferers -- he to act and she to
sell programs. She came to him in his dressing room, crying. He thought
that there had been bad news from home and braced himself to hear it.

"I've lost my purse with all the rest of the money we had left"
said she. Benrimo says that he is laughing yet.

Away back, his father owned some placer diggings in Yolo.

A certain Chinese padrone, with 300 coolies to rent, leased the digging
ings. He didn't do very well, and by the end of the year he was

getting along with the permission of his creditors. At about that time,
he went to Benrimo the elder and explained that the only way he would
be able to hold the lease and pull through was to raise ten thousand dol
lars. Knowing that this Ah Yick was a good Chinaman, and that a Chana-
man, if he goes into bankruptcy, always pays off his debts anyway, they
gave him the money and took a six months note. At the end of six mont
months he brought in the ten thousand. When the note was quashed,
he said:

"Now I want to borrow five thousand more."

"But why did you return it all if you wanted five thousand of it?"
they asked.

"Because I said I would," said Ah Yick. They gave him the five thousand. It put him on his feet, and they got rich. That was 25 years ago, when Ah Yick was a young man. Every Christmas since, in whatever part of the world they happened to be, they all got Christmas presents from Ah Yick.

Benrimo, like the rest of us, was a week hearing from his people.
The news came in this form:

"We have lost everything but are safe and comfortable. Ah Yick
has found us."

There sat in the corner an old actor, one, I suppose, who had
played with Booth, for he spoke as though he had known him. In the
tail of the evening, he and Benrimo got to talking the shop of their
profession -- not the cheap shop, "we-cleaned them all up at Duluth" of
the Tenderloin, but the deeper things of acting as an art, together wit
the question whether Booth or Keene or Fechter would have made
be recognized in these days. The old actor -- I missed his name --
is a fine and gracious figure of an old gentleman, the male counterpart
of Rosland's "Old dames that owe to art their ancient air" -- and
the actor sloughed off both of them as they talked of the deeper
things of their profession. I wish that you might have heard it --
after all my impatience at the continual shop talk of actors, it was
very pretty.

The figure of the old man led Gilbert White to tell a tale of the
club. They had there until a few months ago an actor named Malone.

He had played with Booth, this man Malone, and he was the patriarch of the club; its authority and Dr. Johnson. He had venerable white hair, and he used to doze in the corners and glare at anyone who laughed loud enough to disturb his sleep. He was supposed to be about 80 years old, and got all the coddling and/reverence that belonged to his age. One day last winter, he dropped dead outside the club -- and then they learned from the obituaries that he was only 58.

"And we were so disillusionized that it hurt to have to pay for the funeral," said White. It is positively the only case I ever hear of a man simulating age as women simulate youth.

I was in the McClure shop yesterday for a few minutes. Certain things seem to make it advisable for me to get out to Idaho early in the game; I should not be surprised if I had to start soon after the first of June. It was introduced to Miss Willa Cather, who wrote "The Troll Garden," and who is going to be with the firm. Also to Mrs. Mary

Stewart Cutting, an old and passing homely woman with the very air of the middle class and dull commuter which repeats me in her tales -- although I recognize their insight. She made the illuminating remark that the people who were getting out didn't have any imagination anyway.

Here I go on a Louis Zeltner tip. The City Editor says that he is figuring on a good job for me on the last night of my newspapering. He thinks that South Side Stations, the job which usually falls to the office boy when he graduates to be a reporter, would be an appropriate one.

They are after me in the office for jobs on McClure's -- three applications already this afternoon. One of them nearly breaks me up. It is an old Frank Mathews -- a good reporter still, although he must be more than fifty. He is old, sick, past his active days as a reporter, and too washed out to be a good magazine man. Yet he comes around and tells me that he wants to get out of the business and can't find him employment on McClure's. Of course, he won't do, yet how shall I tell him? The tragedy of being old! Then up comes Arthur Seavey from the Laffan Bureau with a tale about an old schoolteacher of his who has an intimate knowledge of literature and a fine mind -- can't I find something for her to do, because it's a tragedy that she has to be held to teaching for the rest of her days. These things are hard to throw down.

Just think, if I do go about writing for the magazine, as on this Idaho thing, I shall have good report to make to you in the log after all. I was figuring that the log would have to be all of uninteresting people and dull routine, and worth little to you. But Idaho should be mightily affording.

I'm planning to get a week off before I come over to McClure's, in which time I shall rest up from the taking out of my tonsils, which I shall have done just as I quit. They say that it will not put me in bed or anything like that, but that I must just lie about and seem quiet. And if my throat is all right at that time, I may put off the tonsil process until Fall.

Sunday;

I'm not entirely pleased by the call down apropos of Henry James, because the data on which you found it are insufficient. You say that I have founded my opinion without reference to the giants of the age, without knowledge of them. Now I submit that I am ignorant of only three of the known writers of the age, the three of a peculiar school whom I mentioned in my letter. I have never heard any critic call Henry James or George Meredith giants of the age; they may be so, but in view of Browning, Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Hugo, and ten or twelve others whom I know, I hardly think that in two centuries James, Meredith and Moore will be called giants, or will be known at all except as contributors to a Sutro Library of the Twenty Third Century. Moreover, in saying that I am out of tune with the nineteenth century, I don't mean in the narrow field of letters alone. I mean in the whole field of intellectual endeavor. However, let's fight that out when I see you!

Yesterday I worked all day on an unaffording Zeltner tip. In the evening, I learned an amazing fact, which has no bearing on either you or me, but which will make a good story for you when I have the chance to tell it. I shall not be at liberty to tell it for a fortnight. That same amazing fact will have a bearing on my visit to you at Marblehead (for I understand that I am invited) This is my present plan. I shall leave the service of the Sun on Tuesday the 22d of May. That day, I shall have my throat operated on. On the following Thursday, I shall have to be in town in connection with the amazing fact. I shall rest up from the operation until Thursday, discharge my duties in a frock coat, and take train that night for Boston, the old familiar midnight train. After that, I'll get the first train for Marblehead. This acceptance is, as usual, subject to any reason whatever for your not wanting me to come -- frankness, frankness!

This morning I had to go to the thirtieth anniversary of the Society for Ethical Culture and sit through three mortal hours of speeches on the progress of the society. It is a relief to be told to go out to find why Celia Boyd is going to marry Professor somebody or other, the professional tattooer of the Bowery.

Monday Morning:

Ridgeway of Everybody's is sore on me because I took the McClure job before I saw him -- I had already seen Denison and learned what he had, but I hadn't seen the real hea d. I saw him this morning, and a keen call-down -- one of the very best I ever saw. I'm wondering, dimly, amorphically, if it wasn't subtle. I'll tell you all about it when I see you. I don't know whether I've made an enemy there or no. It was a cinch that someone would get mad.

Yesterday afternoon brought a tale of the Bowery about a lady en-
gaged to a tattoo artist who did the skirt dance at three o'clock in
the morning for the benefit of the Chinese. It didn't get into the paper
for some reason or other. There was just time to grab a dinner and
run to a little and hot hall on the lower West Side, where Julius
Hopps, the head highbrow of the Progressive Stage Society, was giving an
entertainment for the benefit of the Socialist movement. But we had
supposed that Julius was doing something presenting one of his own
plays. I found instead that it was just an amateur performance of one
of Meud Adams' one act plays, and not worth a story on a lively day for
newThat let me out at 11 o'clock. The moral of this is that I worked
like Hades from 11 to 11 and got never a line in the paper -- one of
the disgusting days which make the low places in journalism.

This morning, I dropped into the office of the McClure, and stopped
to talk with Willa Cather. Enter McClure. "We are going to have an
editorial conference -- I want you young people to learn how to edit
a magazine. Come on Irwin." There was a half an hour of a session
like that of Gil Blas with the archbishop. We sat in a row -- Willa
Cather, efficient, a little masculine, steel blue in the eye, firm in
the jaw -- Bynner, who is Bynner, craning his neck to everything the
Chief said, saying "yes, Mr. McClure, that was a beautiful phrase, let
me put that down." This is a fact. His servility is something superb.
Camp highbred and gentle, a youth with a great deal of steel under the
value -- and I, who have been trying to describe myself to you for a

year(some scrambled typewriting on the last page. Machinery is my weak point -- and you ask me to run an auto!) In the middle of the group, McClure, half insane, half genius, giving directions the head and tail whereof were hidden, so that we held another conference afterwards to see what he meant and what we should do about it. Coming out, I met Steffins, who is in for a few weeks while he finishes off a series of articles. He was very cordial, like the good little man he is, told me that I had a great chance and offered to hold a conference with me and tell me just what he thought of everything and how to get on with the Boss. S. S. caught me as I was leaving and asked me to do an editorial making the announcement about the split in the firm. A day later you are. I told Steffins how I felt in the head and wheels after San Francisco, and he said that if my Sun vacation couldn't be got in, he would see the boss about giving me one on McClure's as the firm is liberal in that respect. So I'll get away somehow. And God knows I need it. Everyone is telling me that I am a nervous wreck, and I am thinking so myself. The chief manifestation is the way I jump at closing doors and sudden touches on the shoulder and all the things which I once scorned to notice. Then those tonsils have come out before I brave the summer snow storms of the high mountains. It is just possible that I won't go out to Colorado. Steffins has just told me that he has returned from there only this week, and it may be that he is going to do it himself. In fact, I am getting into the condition of the true McClurite -- I don't know where I am at.

Tuesday Mornign;

Yesterday, it was to see General Stahel, the oldest friend of Carl Schurz, and try to get out some personal reminiscences. It was a day with the soldiers of fortune, for the tip about Stahel came from one Crouch. Now I had heard of this man Crouch. He is an Englishman who, in his youth, followed the call of '48 in Europe to Garabaldi. I pause to say that the Gods of Adventure must have held revel at about that time. Think of Kossuth, Garabaldi, and the German revolutionists turning Europe topsy survey at that time, the Republicans of Texas fighting on the border everyday fights that made the feats of the Trojans look like a tea party, and the brawn and romance of these United States fighting their way by land and wilderness to follow the dream of El Dorado. Youth was served in that day.

Crouch fought all through with Garabaldi. He drifted to the United States, tried California for a time, hit England, and became a blockade runner in the Civil War. He had two vessels shot from under him. Then, in New York, he tagged to Jay Gould and became his broker. One summer, securities being all right, he left his fortune in other hands and bucked into the wilds of Montana to hunt grizzlies. There came a panic that ended in Black Monday. Telegrams, couriers, messengers looked for Crouch for a month to get the authority to unload, for Gould saw it coming. They couldn't find him; and when he came back to civilization he was poor. Since then, he has hung about the Hoffman House, a rialto for men of his sort, living on an occasional commission -- "and," the City Editor says, "dodging bastard cases." It was he who tipped us off to Stahel, a forgotten figure of the Civil War, was at the Hoffman and knew Schurz intimately.

I met Crouch -- a garrulous, tactless old man, and full of self-importance. He insisted on having the official position of taking me to the General; so up we went. I found General Stahel an incredibly young man of 81 -- erect, small, the inefficable bearing of the horseman about him. He was a general under Kossuth in his youth, and one of the minor cavalry leaders of the Civil War. He has a quiet and straight way of speaking, and the soldier's habit of making his reminiscences

straight and devoid of the picturesque.

"Did you see Schurz at Second Bull Run?"

"Oh, yes. He was very brave. He fought a good fight there. He always knew how to manoeuvre men." Nothing more than that -- bald and bare. Such men are hard for the interviewer to handle, but I have found that if you gently touch their sympathies a little they warm and drop the real, human stuff as a kind of a by-product to things which they consider more important. I started to do that -- and Crouch, who was hovering over the interview and doing more talking than either of us, wouldn't let him. He kept throwing in malapropos remarks --

"Well, General, we must all go some time. It must have been a great consolation to have him so long; I suppose that you have been hoping against hope." With that against me, I had to give up trying to get anything very good. But I did get a letter out of him which Schurz wrote to Lincoln and which made a good anecdote. With that I had to leave. Before I left, there was a pretty little incident which I put at the end of the Sun story -- Stahel drew out a list of the Major Generals of the Civil War, and crossed off formally the name of Schurz. In a list of about thirty, there are only 4 left -- he has crossed off all the rest so that the list bears an aspect of mourning.

In the evening, it was to review at shortness a perfectly footless play which is having a little New York run to fit it for the provinces.

I have just dropped in for a moment to the McClure shop, and have an editorial about the split in the firm to do before tomorrow morning. He seems to consider that I am working for him already.

Wednesday Morning.

The Sun, for the first time, printed this morning two columns of
crowd and chertle about itself and the San Francisco work. I end it
slog. The paper never did such a thing before. Another piece of hot air;
after which I shall get over being conceited and cease to transmit.
A fellow from Princeton says that on the Monday after "The City That Was"
appeared, the Professor of Modern Literature there read it from beginning
to end to his class and said that he would rather have written that than
any novel which has come out in the last twenty-five years. So this
morning I swell with the pride that puffeth up.

Another rag time session with McClure. Miss Roseboro', honest soul
tat she is and unbiassed friend, has opposed my going to Idaho. She says
that she doesn't think my calibre is great enough yet. The old man told
her that he disagreed -- or told me so -- and was all for my going.
So I suppose that I make my start early in June, although I see now that
there is nothing certain about this shop. Howard Pyle told me that he
had fallen in love with "The Bubble of Dreams" and had one of his good
new men making three full-page color illustrations for it. They're going
to print it early in the Fall -- October, maybe. That is a rather good
thing, as the Idaho tale will come at about that time and so my work
will be massed.

Yesterday brought only an interview that was no good with H. H.
Huntington of California. In the evening, they graciously let me
off, and I did a lot to "The Book-Lady". Somehow, I found it impossible
to change her a great deal, and I've about got her ready for the type-
writer. I'll have that done in three or four days, and send it in
under an assumed name. So much for the job.

I have today another good letter which I transmit -- Bessie Strong
this time. It seems that I sent the money to Wallie Young a little
late, for if he had had ready cash, he might have got a bed -- but it
will come in handy with him in the hospital. They've one and all
refused money when I've offered it, and one and all shown that they
needed it after I sent it in spite of their protests. That shows the

pride and spirit of them. To my list of Far Western virtues, I shall
have to add pride!

I struck a little, queer question in gentility last night -- one
of those small and instructive questions in manners. There is in the
office a fairly decent cub named Smith. Yesterday, a friend from college
came in to see him. I met them again on a crowded Subway Express.
Smith introduced his friend to me. It was plain from his childish at-
titude that he was showing off a little bit his acquaintance with the
Sun star. Of course, it was up to me under the circumstances to be
cordial; and I was.

There was a crowd up to Foutrteenth Street, when a lot of people got
off and we found seats. I settled down, saying:

"I suppose now that see blooming woman will come along and it will
be all off with Bill and his seat." Then spoke Smith:

"I always think that woman, unless she is an old woman, has no
right to expect a tired man who has been working to give her his seat.
I never do unless she is very pretty and I want to make a hit with
her --" etc. etc. While he was talking in this strain, a girl got on
and stood hanging to a strap directly before me. She must have heard
part of what he said. Now you've never been a man, and you e n't know
how it feels to be sitting down and have a woman, especially if she
looks like a tired shop girl, standing up before you. "All of a sudden,
I said:

"I can't stand this any longer!" and I got up and gave her a seat.

Now the thing which interested me there was this: It would have been
a great deal better manners for me to have kept that seat, seeing that
I humiliated this young man Smith in the presence of his friend before
whom he was trying to make a showing. On the other hand, if I had
been alone with Smith, it would have been the thing to do. A delicate
little problem, wasn't it?

McClure ordered me to write an editorial about the withdrawal,
steering delicately between Scylla and Charybdis. There were only three
hundred words to it; but do you know that I have labored for hours for
three days to get that thing right and turned it in with the feeling that
it was rotten? I'd sooner have reported a political contertion.

Thursday morning;

Well, my dear, the worst has happened in the affair of Maysie; and
yet perhaps it is only my ungenerous mind which calls it the worst; if a
women loves as she must love, perhaps the love is consolation enough.
The Sun this morning had a short dispatch from San Francisco saying that
she had married Emerson at Mrs. Stevenson's house. Also that he proposed
by telegraph. The scutt had to do something sensational.

I'm pretty much broken up over this, for I am afraid that it means
the loss of a friend. Surely, after the letter which I wrote about him
and which I have no cause to take back, I can never appear to be friendly
with him nor receive any of his hospitality; and I doubt if he is the man
to permit his wife to see a man away from his house, nor yet she the
kind of girl to over-rule his commands. After he is done with her,
then I suppose that I may step in again and try to take care of her.
I'm not at all happy this morning. The thing is on my spirits.

Another daffy session with S. S. McClure this morning. He is a
perpetual farce comedy.

This is my day off, and I am spending it typewriting "The Book Lady."

I have decided that my throat is in such shape that it won't have
to be operated upon until Fall. I still must remain in New York until
after Thursday ext. Then, if you wish, I shall come to Marblehead
for a vacation of uncertain duration. I repeat; if there is any reason
why I shouldn't come at this time, if it will inconvenience the Hayes-
Gillmore-Duganne menage in the least, or if there is any other reason,
I may arrange to come at some other time.

Poor, dear, Maysie!

Friday Morning;

The book lady went to her fate yesterday. I sent it McClure's,
under an assumed name and address, following office etiquette. I
didn't like it very well when I had it complete before me; it doesn't
get so near the heart of things as The Bubble of Dreams; and I have strong
doubts of McClure taking it. I think, however, that it will sell somewhere.
It worked out nearly as long as The Bubble of Dreams.

A small but rising publisher of the name of Heubsch has tied up
with me to issue "The City that Was" in book form. I am going to
rewrite it a little so as to get out of it any of the crudities of its
first form, and probably to add a few things to it, like a dissertation
on the Californian beauty and the matinee parade. He thinks that there
will be a fair sale for it as a fifty cent booklet. That will really be
my first book -- all the rest were collaborations!

Into the office yesterday dropped Bennie Benjamin, s्रοting man on
the Chronicle. I wonder if ever I told you of Bennine? At this moment,
I check myself from trying to write to you about him and his experience
in the earthquake. It is too full of detail, too delicate in its humor,
for me to put it on paper. It must be told by word of mouth, and you are
commanded to command me to tell it!

It is hot, disagreeable, sticky, depressing. I certainly need a
vacation. And as for a log, there is nothing to write now. Wait until I
get out to Idaho!

Saturday morning:

I don't understand your wording of Frank's invitation, as per transmission. Does he invite me to go down from Boston to Marblehead with him, or does he want me, after I am up there, to go with him from Marblehead Neck to Marblehead? For you know, I have to admit a terrific prejudice against the automobile -- I am sorry to have to do that now that you are liking one, -- but the truth must out -- of all the inventions of man to desecrate nature, the worst is the auto. The damn things used to be choosing all day in front of the Wentworth, and I used to feel like shooting at the tires. Then, although I shall not have my tonsils actually cut out, I am going We Wednesday and Thursday to have some cauterizing done, and I'd hate to risk a long, dusty trip just when I am going on a vacation. It might lay me up again on your hands. But the real reason -- to be frank -- is my hatred of the auto, and the madness of hate when I hear it chugging beneath me, so that not even the presence of Frank would compensate.

That hatred was a persistent instinct for a long time. My mind, as you know, works by intuitions and not by reasons. There are two types of mind (all this is in the psychology text books) One, the more valuable and deeper kind, reasons to its ends stage by stage, able to deal all the stopping places of its journeying when it has arrived. The other kind, lacking intellect, leaps to its goal in one flash, and, if it is necessary to recite the stages, it must go over the ground by the weak and imperfect reason which goes with that mind. I know -- as nearly as a man can know himself -- that my mind was formed in this last type in the beginning, and that my business, which demands straight conclusions and instant judgements, has developed that type to its highest degree. So I know things long before I can tell why.

That hatred of the automobile as an excrecence in the scheme of things came upon me early in the auto game, and it is only lately that I have gone over the stages and painfully found out why. I thought at first that it might be my love for the horse and my hatred for the rival of my friend; but I saw that it went deeper than that. I thought that it might be a feeling against the so-called upper classes, and against

the life of the world, which interests me less than any other life on
this planet. I saw, though, that it went deeper than that. One day,
walking on Fifth Avenue, I got it. The automobile is a thing with which
people play in their leisure; and it measures the distance which the modern
world has gone from the good, healthy, nature, which is the heart and found-
ation of all sanity and right living, that they take up their leisure
playing with a machine. Machines are good in their place -- work.
They enable us to do it more quickly; they give us more comforts; they
permit me in New York to come to see you in Boston over a week end. As a
means, they serve, but in the automobile, we are making them an end.
This, I am sure, is the reasonable foundation for my dislike of that
modern machine which all the world is loving now. I never want to
take a trip in one when I can go by train.

I am afraid that this last paragraph is bromidical.

I have moved. The last of my personal effects is speeding on its
way to Billy's Twenty-sixth street quarters where we had the blowout
after my dinner at the Griffou. Lord, how a man accumulates. It has been
one of my minor ambitions to go in light marching order through the world.
When I came to New York, I brought all my worldly goods and chattels in
one small steamer trunk. Today, after I had thrown away everything that
I could, I packed tight a steamer trunk, a big soubrette's trunk, two suit
cases and a box! I was positively disgusted with myself. I wish that
some woman might have had the farce comedy joy of seeing me pack.

Yesterday, I did extend an extended biography of Fannie Herring, the actress
who wouldn't leave the stage. It involved seeing an old store-house of
stage memories, one Colonel Brown, a megalomaniac, formal old gentleman
who writes encyclopediæs of players and things. He started the first
dramatic agency in this country, and he is still running it on a
reduced scale in a small back room on Broadway. He has no eye for the
picturesque; all that he could say was the Fanny was "a nice little lady" and
refer me to a book of clippings with a caution that if I didn't mention his
name I'd never get anything out of him again. While I worked in the corner
an overblown lady in white came in and was informed that the star part in
the Number 5 college widow company was filled, but that he had a speaking

part in the crowd.

"My Gawd! " said she, "I never played less than a six side bit in
my life!" When she was gone, he said, with no humor in his voice,

"She'll be back for it this afternoon."

In the evening, it was to josh the pupils of the Conreid Opera School. It was a hot night, the hall was close, and after the third number music had its regular effect. I got to the rear of the room and passed the time between watching and going out to smoke when the fits of drowsiness got too strong.

Nothing which has happened in this hurried winter has depressed me
more than Maysie's marriage. I don't think that she will ever straighten
him out -- I say that not knowing him, but knowing the type. Such a man
is a liar to the bottom. He has lied to her all the way through and will
continue to lie to the last. She herself is all straight truth. Then,
there is a great deal of doubt whether he is sane. That is the explanation
of him which half of Park Row gives. He has enough talents to have
got to the fore on his merits if he had been straight -- which is a common
thing with that class of criminal. He has chosen to be a crook by pre-
ference, and I would be inclined to say -- without seeing him -- that
he is hopeless.

Last night, dictating Chollie Knickerbocker to the Queen, I showed a
shade of irritation because she can't begin to speak the simplest word.

"Look here," said Her Majesty, "If you get cross with me I'll kiss
you!" Who could hold wrath in the face of such an answer?

I am pretty sure that they will lay her off with the beginning of
the summer season, when all society is out of town. Thank God, she has
at least paid her rent.

Which reminds me -- Bennie Benjamin remarked the first thing:

"I had only sixty cents when the earthquake came -- I had paid two
months rent the day before -- ain't that a hard luck tale?"

A few dotty moments again with S. S. McClure this morning. I have
my doubts whether I shall go West after all. I'd rather made up my mind
for that tale, but Viola persists that I am hot capable of it. She
reckons not with the reporter's willingness to tackle anything.

Sunday Morning;

Yesterday afternoon I was at Coney Island observing the Great Train Robbery. After the show, Bill Thompson, the press agent, asked me if I didn't want to go behind the scenes and talk to the actors. The first man we met was the one who plays sherriff, a man named Cody, who is a professional Westerner like unto the professional Southerner who is such a standing joke in New York. I think that he was a cowboy once, but years ago he fell afoul of a circus or a vaudeville show or something, and began his posing. Now, he wears broad hats and plays at being a cowboy and talks blood and pistols all the time. He had been shooting at us every time he passed us in the grand fight with the road agents, and he started in on that moment I met him. He held in his hand an empty Colt's revolver, a regular young cannon, and with that he gesticulated as he said:

"Did you know it took a ton of bullets to kill one man in action? Hey? Why, down in Dodge City, when I was a boy, there came into town a gang of drunekn punchers, more than forty of them. They was shooting right and left like this -- " illustrations with the pistol -- "And the little sherriff come out and started in to restore order, by God. He sort of scrooged himself down behind a wagon and brought up his winchester like this and pulled the lever slow and easy --"

At that very, psychological moment, a cowboy rode up an a cavorting little bronco, and said:

"There's a trainwreck just outside the gate. Four or five people killed." The press agent and I were off like sprinters from the mark, leaving the sherriff still talking. We went at a quarter pace through the Saturday holiday crowd, dodging the gaudy pillars of Luna, and out through a side entrance. An elephant tamerpointed out along the flats. There, in the distance, was a crowd and the head of a stalled car. The press agent, true to his instincts, thought of photographs to endear him to the illustrated paper, and I continued on my dog-trot through the hot air to get to the scene before the survivors get away.

Down the track came a pale woman, trying to carry a little boy who

I turned to follow. A lad in a striped shirt and a red handkerchief, plainly one of the show people, walked with me. He asked me if he was from the World. I was not; from the Sun. "Well, the World has been good to our show. If you'll come with me after the show with a World reporter, I'll tell you something you'd like to know." I pointed out to him that the reporters kip xxxxx limped before she picked him up. Behind her came two men, bareheaded -- the leading one bleeding from his temple. Without the blood and the limping, I could have told that they had been through the wreck by their stupid, dazed air -- the sure reaction from an accident. I caught them. As survivors always are, they were irritated at being asked questions, and they had only a mixed idea of what had happened. The man or woman who could tell you a straight tale of an accident is as rare as a blue moon. It had been hard; they had all gone under the seats; the little boy had cried; there was a man in the wreckage with his legs cut off and a woman all over her blood; no, they wouldn't give their names; would I leave them alone? Further down, a man in a gray suit and the ready made tie of a workingman on his half holiday was supporting a German woman from whose hair the blood was running in a steady little stream which he was sopping up with a handkerchief and regarding as though he wondered at it. I have heard of that same phenomenon in battle; how the men appear to wonder rather than to suffer; never before did I see it so distinctly as this time. They also were confused. "It was just an awful jar," he said. "Where can I get a doctor?" I trotted on; ahead of me, the crowd began to dissolve, and I saw that the wreck was in motion. They had managed to get the trolley to working, and the express train which had been the cue-ball in this devil's game of billiards, was pushing the remains of the local, the object-ball, to the Cony Island station. I stepped aside to let it pass. Through the windows of the local, I caught the bent head and the clericals of a priest, and knew that some one was dying. Even then, with my whole mind on the story, I had time for a little recollection -- of a wreck where I was dazed, and of the queer bit of truth that flashed through my shattered mind then.

the reporters always stand in. When I met the world man, I would tell
him all that I knew. But That wouldn't do for him. He couldn't be
sure. I knew at once that with his small self-importance he couldn't
keep his desire to tell news for long, and that silence was the policy.
So I walked for two blocks without saying a word, and finally he burst
out with:

"Well, I won't be mean. I'll tell you if you'll tell the World.
When I got there, all four of the trainmen were quarelling because
none one had come out of the local when it slipped thr trolley, to
warn the express or to flag it." There I had it, the most difficult
thing to get about a wreck -- the cause. I took my dog trot again,
and reached the first group I had met-- the two men, the woman, and
the little boy. They were Jews, and young. The woman, in normal times,
would have been a bit coarse. Suffering and pallor had taken it all
out of her. God, if there is a God, has set pain, if there is pain,
for the refining of the world. Pain always refines. She was Madonna as
she tried to lift the boy. As for the man, they didn't notice. They
were in their own daze of suffering, and there was no heroism in them.
I, the well, lifted the boy and carried him.

"We want a doctor," she said. I stop to say that the ambulances had
been through a collision in the early stages of the accident, and that
they were short on surgeons. We were by the side gate of Luna by this
time. I know that they are short of doctors in the Island, and also that
they have a regular doctor at Luna. I sat them on a bench by the door and
for the second time that day I scooted on a dog trot through the butcher's
wives and the shop girls making holiday. I found near the front entrance
the press agent and told him my troubles.

"Bring them to the infirmary," he said. "Great ad. "Where the Hell
is that doctor?" We couldn't find the doctor, and so he ordered out his
auto and we scooted down the side of the Park looking formy injured. Alas,
the tale lost its climax. They had got titred of waiting five minutes is
an hour when you suffer -- and had gone on to a drug store. There
isn't much that would interest you in the rest of the gathering; it was
the slow progress of finding surgeons and asking questions of the police.
At six o'clock, I got Boss Clark on the telephone, and told him that I was
hadling the tale. First edition goes to press at 11 on Saturday night;

and I had the opening of Dreamland to do in the evening. I sat down at once and wrote the story; dined on the well-remembered balcony in Luna Park, and rustled through Dreamland getting all I could. At ten, I started back for the city, writing the Dreamland tale as I rode on the train. I reached the office at a quarter to 11 with both tales written. And there, I encountered one of the wheels of Boss Clark.

The failing of that veritable genius is a lack in courage. He has lived, and will die, in a position which a man of one quarter of his size would have filled as well; and courage is the lack. That is not my thought; a little, narrow man, who sees the more keenly in his range for that root of the world is hidden from his opera glasses, told me that; and it was a truth. So the Boss has a way of going up in the air and getting excited and thinking that that thing will never come out right. So although I have never failed to get in early copy, he did not have the faith to believe, when I failed to show after ten o'clock, that I would get that story in on time. So he had taken an imperfect account of it from the Brooklyn office for the first edition. He let that run; and for the second edition, he ruled that the two stories, mine and that of the Brooklyn man, should be amalgamated. If I were going to stay on the Sun, I sould have fought him. AS it was, I let it go; and the tale in the later editions is a queer hodge-podge of errors, in which I take some satisfaction. Once, three weeks after I got on the paper, I threw into the Boss three swift oral jabs which straightened him up and made him treat me ever after with the greatest respect. That has worn away, and the time has come when, were I to stay on the paper, he would need another just where he lives.

So, after all, I have an adventure for the dying days of the newspaper log.

I am three-quarters of the way through "The Garden of Allah" and I love it as much as you do. You admire the drawing of the woman, and so do I, but after all, the thing which I admire most is the character of this renegade monk -- for I foresee that he can be nothing else. I think that when the disclosure comes, she will abandon him; that the religious feeling -- the religiosity -- cultivated by the strange atmosphere in which she has lived to love him on the pages of God will

which she began to love him, with a figment of her love for her God, will make this inevitable. What a master of cumulative effect! What a critic of the soul, the soul which is the woman of the twin being of man. The Fathers always speak of the Soul as "She"; "Her" God; "Her" meditations; and therein they had a truth. The mind is the male part of creation, the soul the female. Not as a man but as a woman in the strength of weakness does one enter his holy of holies, whether it be a mass, a contemplation of the night, or a divine love for a woman. That a man has been able to perceive and to do this is a marvel. Of my appreciation of this book, I shall speak to you with the swift tongue, not the slow types.

If you thought that I thought that you advocated anything so banal as to put the fire into the San Francisco tale, you wronged me. I understand you perfectly. You meant that I might make it a beautiful piece of atmosphere in memory of the City that Was. That, I shall try to do sometime elsewhere; but in the way that the tale of the Book Lady took me, it was a thing apart from any city, a romance of the mind. I am not satisfied with the story. It is inferior to "The Bubble of Dreams;" it does not always ring true, and it halts at places. That, if you know it, is a great compliment to you, for "The Bubble of Dreams" was more yours than mine.

My last Sunday in the newspaper business! I kiss, O Youth, the closed lids over the sky-blue eyes which I shall see only in memory, and bury thee in lilies and hydromel. For me now more the long days of adventure, the tingling of the blood, the impulse to do, regardless of the prize. For me now, only the slipping pen. Ilium fuit -- tall Troy is down.

O Memory! They come to me in flashes, as I write today -- the things which I have seen. Shall I tell you of them, the ones which crowd in on me now?

A long shore, on which the Pacific fights eternally; a sluice running along the very edge of the cliff, and me, making my way painfully, fearfully along the edge, stepping into the dirty water of the sluice, watching in the nooks and crannies of the cliffs to look for the robbers of the dead who are waiting, this tenth day after the Rio wreck, to find the rising

bodies. As I crawl painfully along the sluice, expecting every moment to fall into the breakers, I am hailed. A whale-boat has come about the curve, with weight surfmen swinging together, and a little, sun-burned man, hugging a great dog, at the tuller. It is Captain Hodgson, with the life-saving crew. They put along side, and, waiting a moment when the breakers are down, I drop aboard. The rest of the day is a drift down the yellow tide, where long lines of wreckage float out to sea. No bodies; only a box of paper about the bodies. And while we drift, the surfman making music with their rowlocks, Hodgson tells me that the tale of the Wreck Off Point Conception.

The story is the familiar one -- he loved a woman and had killed her and himself because she would not marry him and be pure. There is always a certain divinity about a crime like this.

A side street in Hell's Kitchen, San Francisco, and an awed crowd but a dark doorway. I dodge through them, showing my badge. Something strikes me in the back and knocks me down. I get up, to see that I have been struck in the darkness by a coffin, carried on the shoulders of four men. I get up and follow the crowd to the room where they lie. He is on the floor on his face. The body is huddled, for the dead lie not like the sleeping. The pulp appears to have gone out of their muscles, so that they fall like withered fruit. But it is the woman on the bed whom I notice most of all. She wears the red stockings and the dainty high-heeled shoes of the prostitute; her skirts are above her knees in death's mockery of her immodesty; and there is something infinitely tragic in this, I think, so that I watch those stockings and grow full of horror at them, rather than the face with the stream of blood drying on the temples. The story is the familiar one -- he loved a woman and had killed her and himself because she would not marry him and be pure. There is always a certain divinity about a crime like this.

That night of the trainwreck of which I have told you so often, poor Smith dying upon my shoulder, and I, in the realization of his agony, calling upon piteous Christs if suffering Christs there be.

The time that I stood in The Presidio Hospital and saw a private, alone with me and the nurse, give his three long breaths and die -- and I thought that there could be nothing else, no immortality-nothing but that clay to clay. And I looked up at that panorama of the bay, that water sweeter and more mysterious than any waters which you

know in this male clime -- and saw a great ship, under full sail, going
out of the Gate into the Ocean of Mystery -- and thought of the Peaceful
Ocean of unnumbered souls and believed again.

The time that a Spanish woman kissed me because I had been good to
her. She was as low as the lowest, but she kissed me on the foreheadlike
a mother -- no suggestion, nothing. I never saw her again, and I
suppose that by now she is dead of her trade. I like to think that it
was a spark which she kept in her to the last. I cannot remember now all
of the story, now just wherein I was good to her; but it was a pretty
incident.

The Vision of Sudden Death on Cherry Street, wherein I had my closest
call.

A plain, Irish policeman, charging with his club like a Bersikir into
a gang of strikers with guns in their hands, striking right and left and
cowing them because he was a man. The ridiculous clothes of his authority
dropped from him in my eyes; I saw only the man, dominant, slendid.

These are the things which flash in upon me as I close the note book
and go away. Why these and not many others? What common factor is there
in them which touches the deepest chord in me?

Lilies and hydromel for thee, O youth, and a grave by the Ocean of
Adventure where sleeps in her the City, my City!

Thursday evening.

Such a week asthis has been -- getting settled and fighting the
shadows of the Boss. For he has been on a rampage this week which makes
the rest of his rampages look like the breath of love. He has been
talking about going to Europe or to the desert or somewhere; and then,
he being sore on me just now, he has said that he would not go to the
desert because he couldn't stay away; and this afternoon he confided to
Miss Cather that he is about to sail in the morning for parts unknown --
probably the same desert. It appears that I have held him down too
tight; he thinks of me of late as the man who takes his candy away or
as the Senate thinks of Roosevelt, and he has a dull suspicion of all
my motives. I am holding my breath and hoping that he will really,
really go.

And all this has gone on with the labor of getting settled and of
getting acquainted with my son, who is just a little suspicious of me
and inclined to pass things up to his mother. The first morning,
I took him into the other room from Hallie and sat him down before me and
started to amuse him. Noticing that the door was open, I stepped to
close it. I turned to find him with his eye on the door and the tears
starting. "I don't want the door shutted," he said as he burst out.
The intelligent child wanted a breakaway in case I got violent. I
New Years partied with Daisy and Maude and company, and
they did nothing but ask me questions which, in my ignorance, I could
not answer, concerning this here child of mine. His table manner could
be improved, and he often speaks when not spoken to, but his sleeping
habits are great. We're settled in the Hatfield House at 103 East 29
street, and it is sure a bad place, but the best I could pick off my
own bat. At picking places to live, I am a little worse than I am at
ordering a dinner, and you know me there.

I was a bit amused to see that in my purely academic discussion of irritation as a factor in sex attraction you had got stirred, O champion of your sex. I could tell it by the way you mentioned my youth, that being as near a stock repartee as anything is stock in your language or vocabulary. Prathee remember that I was purely and specially academic, and that I wasn't trying in the least to make it personal to any woman who ever wore skirts. As a matter of fact, I probably made my mistakes in estimating some of the irritations of your sex, but so did you in one instance in your response. You went wild in one of your beliefs on a masculine character. Query: which one? And while we are on the subject, permit me, O excellent and good, to point out with pride to the fact that I am a friend of the woman who wrote the last Theorora's theories in Ridgway's. It is a bully pice of work. Why, O why don't you write essays?

I hear the "Hurrying feet" of the Chief coming down the hall. It is up to me to force him to confess that he is going abroad, so that I can read him a lecture on the purchase of the gold brick while traveling for his health.

If he will only stay months and months. I am worn out -- take that excuse for the incoherence of this!

Saturday Jan 5, 1907.

I am a comparatively untramelled man. The Chief has gone; and here
upon the typewriter of Miss Bray(Mine being still packed) I hasten to
tell you of the sense of relief that has settled over this office.

Poor, distracted creature, he wrote me before he left one of the most
pathetic letters I ever received -- a kind of an apology for his ram-
pages in which he admits for the first time to me, his mental condition.
And we've dragged all day on Christain Science, getting the third article
into shape. By this time doubtless you know that Mrs. Eddy has done
us the honor of a reply in which we glory as one of the great humorous
documents of history.

His late projects embrace a grand insurance scheme (I am back on
the Chief again with true masculine irresponsibility) by which with a
quarter of a million dollars of capital he can control all the great
companies and through them all the financial system of the country.
Dwelling upon that, he has let his mind run free until he finds himself
dictator of the United States -- that was the very thing which he
proposed to me the other day and which called forth his remark that I
was simply an earthy clod -- a project for the both of us toe go in
together and by means of a great financial and publishing scheme get
control of the government, which we would then administer for the benefit
of the people! He took one whole day from my work while he pounded it
into me. Pure insanity it is now, of the paretic and wild type with

the added complication of natural genius. How long he will be gone
and how he will be, God only knows.

It would do your soul good, though, to hear him in his occasional
flashes of real genius, with which he interlards his wildness. Miss Rose
boro' says that he is subtle. Of that I do not know, but I do know that
he is wonderful. The other day, he was pacing the floor letting the
pipe run free. He stopped suddenly and said:

"There is nothing essentially wonderful about writers. They
say that writers are born not made. That is a lie. Writeres are made,
Irwin, Made." Then he paced the florr back and forth and added under
his breath:

"From the bloody heart of S. S. McClure writers are made. By the
bloody sweat of S. S. McClure."

Last night, stopping to get a drink on my way home to domesticity,
I fell afoul of Margan Roberttson. You remember his sea stories. He is
a little man, burned, bard-faced, with something of the charlatan about
him and an eternal willingness to talk about himself. He mentioned that
he was through with writing, had got respectable. I remembered then
that I hadn't seen anything of his for a year. Then he told me the tale
There was a story about two years ago in Munsey's which I happened to
notice and approve greatly at the time, about an Qmerican Lieutenant
who was caught by the Japs in a submarihe and remained there a prisoner
while the sank a Russian battleship. Its interest for me lay in the
vivid telling but especially in the way he drew the contrast between
Anglo-Saxon and Japanese courage. Now in that tale, he put in or pur-

poses of the story a "persicope", a wonderful instrument which peeps
up like a little glass eye from the top mast of a submarine, but which
carries below, through the laws of optics, a vision of all that is
passing above; so that one may sit submerged twelve feet and watch,
through this little eye which cannot be seen a quarter of a mile away,
the whole horizon. While he was writing, the idea of this thing took
hold on him. He made up his mind that such a thing could be invented,
and by gum he invented it. And now he stands to make $75000 out of it,
and is planning out an invisible searchlight which children in the navy
will cry for. He eded by saying:

"Writing is Hell -- agany. I wouldn't go through my literary care
again for a million dollars. Which I put down as pose.

I watched Hallie through the process of buying an evening coat toda
Not for the love of the evening coat did I watch it, but for the pure lov
love of seeing the operations of a shop girl of the extreme sulphitic
type -- a rather elderly, very dress-made and peroxided lady of tact
who looked like the Queen of all saleladies. Few things delight me more
than that professional flattery of that type of girl. And on the
way back, I met Daisy and Maude, who had just called, found Hallie
out, and stopped to while away a half an hour playing blocks with the
hier to the Irwin millions. They showed much enthusiasm. They had
just been collided with by Frank, who was driving out a lody in an auto

Tomorrow afternoon, I must start for a lost and abandoned part of
New Jersey named Vineland, in order to reach which by Monday I misout
must travel all day Sunday. It is just to see a person who has made a study
of the sex peculiarities of Mrs. Eddy and who won't come to New York to

Monday evening;

"and he died for a drunken son of a Gun. You've heard of the
grand charge of the Astor Battery. You have if you've read the news-
papers. It was a grand affair the way you read it -- the charge of the
Astor Battery at Santa Ana Church. As a matter of fact the charge was a
about a hundred yards. There was a captain in the Spanish outfit who
had guts. You know how the Spaniards just put up a mock defence,
to save their faces and redeem the honor of Spain. But this man had
fifty North of Spain men, big, black-bearded fellows who didn't have time
to be afraid. They were posted where they could sweep that road, and
they put up a real fight. It was a regular shooting gallery. And as I
say, we dragged that little gun a hundred yards. Then someone, somewhere
blew a retreat. We didn't stop to see whether it was our own bugler
who had blown it. We were only too glad to hear it; and we fell
into the gullies on each side of the road where they couldn't get us.
I was next to Denny as usual. He was talking all the time --"Sure
it's a bad thing for artillery to leave its guns. They never ought
to leave their guns. It's a frightful thing, sure. It was about that
time I lifeted up to see and something like a little puff of wind took
off my straw hat and you bet I ducked down again. There were little
puffs of dust playing all up and down that road, and they's xxxx come
'pink!' against that gun. And just then the drunken son of a gun did it.
He was the scum of the Bowery; we had enlisted him drunk. He had buste
d loose all the way from Manasset to Cavite and spent four weeks in the
guard house. And that morning, as we found out afterwards, he had
swiped a jug of wine from one of the huts we burned. Out he staggered
into the road, filled to the muzzle and yelling 'To Hell with Spain!'

166

one of the prettiest, neatest,

I have been thinking a great deal of your Maud Park, as you have
revealed her to me with the gold and honey tongue of you. It takes
one to the manor born to do things in the manor naturally. I have seen
a great deal of this social settlement work in the West, done by Western
women. Try as they will, they always carried a suggestion of patronage
into their work. Never before have I seen anyone in that work meet
them with such thorough equality as you meet your girls; and I suppose
it is because you are both born to the manor of Boston, where that ideal
of social service is a real thing, not a pose. I should like to see
Maude Park among those people.

---

Don't take too seriously on me that un-American sentence,
treasonable to you, which I loosed in the medium's front parlor. As
a matter of fact, I tried yesterday to take out my soul and look at
it to see whether I was an American or a Californian, and I'll really
be damned if I know! But call Wister a democratic American to me only
in theory; in practice, he pulls from the fellows of his craft—a-from
all others exactly as Mrs. Wharton does, measuring all comers by his
Philadelphia first-families standard. Perhaps that is why he wrote so
well of the cowboy West — he looked from so far outside.

distinction, and, as five o'clock approached, there was a tense silence.

Sunday;

Behold, the first draft of three articles is done, and the first being typewritten, is in such shape that it will not have to be written over again. They told me at Collier's that I could have as much space as the subject was worth; and following that I have decided to make four articles of 5000 each. The first is a general story about the things that happen in seances, the second treats of the straight psychic graft, and the third will round up the other physical phenomena and include my talk with Leroy. I suppose that the rewriting will take far into the next week; and then I'll wait in patience to see whether I am crowned with publication or turned down. I would like to be more confident in this; I realize that, even to treat of the superficial graft, one should be a philosopher for depths; there is nothing too deep in philosophy for a consideration of this borderland. I've been plugging away at it hard; hours and hours when I haven't checked up from time to time to trace copy paper with words, no matter how poor and poorly strung the words, until I pass out! You must excuse these occasional eccentricities of typewriting. This here little Remington, the best forty five dollars worth I ever bought (see me flatter it on its face) has an old time ribbon return. The modern ones shift the ribbons themselves, but this one expects you to do it for him. I never realize that the ribbon is out until the machine begins to act queerly, and by that time I have spoiled four or five lines.

I have varied work by an evening with Rose, who staid over from Cos Cob to pay me the compliment of talking with me for an evening. Such a wonder as she is, with her profound and sane view on human

Monday;

This story for yours. Once, in New York, two men of the very highest social standing went out on a jag. One, whom we will call Smith, was married, and one whom we will call Jones was a bachelor. They ended up in a house of prostitution. Jones, the bachelor, was in a room with a girl, when the matron of the place came running up in the greatest excitement. "She has shot him!" she cried. He went into Smith's room. There lay Smith, dead, and shot through the heart. Jones wasted no time in fighting who did it; the point with him was that the scandal of the thing must be covered up in all events. He cautioned the madame

to say nithing, and he himself ran over to the corner where was the stand of a cabman whom he knew. He had a hundred dollars on him. "I'll give that all to you," he said to the cabman, "if you'll let me have your cab, your hat and your coat for an hour." They made the trade.

Jones drove back to the house, raised the madame. They took the corpse between them, and supported it, as one supports a drunk, out of the place and into the cab. "Those who passed only saw the madame and a cabman attending to a lush. Jones drove to Smith's house. Smith had quarters away from the rest of the family on the ground floor, and he kept a valet who had been in his service for twenty years. Jones got the body into the house and took the valet into his confidence. They found Smith's revolver, and loaded it. "As soon as I'm gone," said Jones, "you fire the revolver down that crack, burts into the room with your shoulder, lay the gun beside the body, and give the alarm, saying that you had the shot and broke in the door." The valet carried it through; it went to the papers as a mysterious suicide in the four hundred. Two years later, Jones was in Jack's. A girl plucked him by the sleeve. "Do you remember me," "no." You ought to.

"I'm the girl that plugged that blank blank blank Smith." Jones hurried away. He never knew why she did it; the imagination has room there.

I was telling this tale yesterday morning at breakfast to Clayton Hamilton and Hooker, when H. D. Paine, from the next table, leaned over and said: "That is perfectly right, Mr. Irwin. I got a good line on the story years ago and it happened about as you say. I have just woven the cab incident into one of my own stories."

Here we debate upon Americanism. I pick flaws first in the reason of my opponent. You say that the Californians you have known do not differ, as you can see, from the New Englanders whom I have met through your good offices; and in the same dash of the typewriter you say that you have been amazed by our moral and mental cowardice as much as you have been charmed by our physical and social courage. Isn't that of itself a difference? But the people whom you have known are not typical Californians. I myself am not of the Californian type.

The point is this: In California there has been worked out a civilization different in its essential essentials and its aims from the main current of American civilization. It is a civilization which suits me better than American civilization; therefore it is the country of my heart. It is now, thank God, a part of that greater America to which I owe my allegiance, and I hope that it will always be such a part, and will leave the rest to a better civilization. If, however, noble minds never split off from the old Patria to form a newer and better one in an environment which they liked better, there would be no United States now. You must remember that such was the action of your own Bunker Hill forefathers. So there. And a great deal more. However, we are fighting over a purely hypothetical proposition, and it gets nowhere;

in the room. There was no time in which to say nothing of the thing to stand of a cabman in the quarters he kept at the body found Smith Jones, "I say, with you saying carried the four plucked

Tuesday evening.

I done wrong yesterday. I have been working pretty hard since I
buckled down to writing, and late in the afternoon I thought to vary it
by going down to the sun. I found it one of the frightfully dull days
that strove a newspaper at about this time of year; nothing doing except
an Armenian murder. The place was full of reporters waiting for a job.
George Mallon, the City Editor, was out for a drink, and his seat was
vacant. With no word to any man, I sat down therein, rapped for an
office boy, and sent for all the reporters. The cubs, who knew me not,
I didpatched on impossible assignments, and had the head office boy


catch them at the door after they had started. Poor little
eyasses, they have been so used to obedience in this strange new world
into which they have plunged after leaving the cloister, that they
obey without question and even for bore to marvel at the new City
Editor. I got O'Malley and sent him to do a funny story about the
crippled girl on the East Side who had been stamped to death by her
brother. In the midst of my joy, Mallon came. But I kept on. I

sent the office boy to fare Boss Lord. I despatched another to tell
Laffan that he didn't belong, and I was going to take charge of his
paper. That started the office going; twenty reporters began to cut up
foolishnes, with the Managing Editor grinning to himself from his corner
and trying to look dignified. Finally, at the earnest request of the
City Editor, Hill and O'Malley led me forth for a drink. When we came
back, I told Mallon that the only thing which would save my reason
and keep my girlish laughetr in me was the undivided presence and
attention of O'Malley and Hill. He thereupon ascribed them both to
take care of me on a time cairge. He really did. O noble Sun. Is ther
another newspaper above ground that would do that? I deem not.

We dined at Keen's. We attended the Orchid. It was a rotten show. I slept through the first act, and Hill said that I did well. After that, we refused to go back, but stood in the bar and received. The ambassadorial visit of three Sun atars in a bunch is an event in any theatre. Among those who clasped out hand was one Allison, play r eader for the Shuberts, whose boast it is that he fought through "the Road to Yesterday" when no one else could see it. He says that it is good for another year in New York. Much money for the authoresses. O'Malley grew eloquent about the field for fiction in the Tenderloin. He thinks that the whole human tragedy and comedy is played out every night between fifty-ninth street and twenty-third street. He hopes some day to put it in an American La Boheme. That boy has been at reporting only a year, and yet he knows his Tenderloin as I once knew my San Francisco. He has done it, too, without any truckling to the morals of the place. He is pretty wonderful, that lad. He really makes me jealous; for his tales have attracted a great deal more attention than mine ever did. The Cattery as going to bring out a book of the only consolation I have is that he doesn't do much of anything but the purelyly funny.

In the course of the evening, we kept sending telegrams to Boss Clark: "It is reported that the Herald Square theatre is on Broadway, Hill O'Malley, Irwin." "We are on the region of Twenty-third street; if you want us, telephone, O'Mally Irwin Hill," and the like. Then we sent the code word Wobble to Thomas in Idaho; after which it seemed good to us to see if we could wake up the Times. Therefore we invaded them at midnight, and expressed our gladness to see them. The Times men are a lot of Bromides. Instead of taking it with a great joy, as they would have done on the Sun, these men seemed embarrassed. When we broke for the Managing Editor's den to pay out respects and the office boy

be damned, to Van Anda, ex-Sun man,
they turned pale at the effrontery of us. Van Anda received us with a
tempered cordiality and just them a reporter named MacAdam who used
to be on the Sun approached us and asked us out for a drink. It was
plain to be seen that the City Editor had put him up to it. "All right
Mr. Tact," said O'Malley, and we proceeded. As we left, we got him
to call up Boss Clark and tell him that three Sun men were raising
Hell in the Times; what was to be done with them? From Shanley's, we
got this same man to call up Clark again, saying that three men giving
the names Hill Irwin and O'Malley were making trouble there; they
said they were Sun men; would the Sun attend to them? "They are
such men," said Boss Clark. "Go to the Times across the street;
they are good at caring for such." I'm told on the quiet, though, that
Boss Clark was delighted all through with the telegrams. We ended
of course at Jack's; where all times in New York end. It is a long
time since I was there; it is a Tenderloiney place, but it is one of the
few spots in New York with atmosphere and traditions. From a table
next to us, a girl rose and walked over to another table, where she
began talking to the party. The waiter went over and whispered to
her; she came back to her seat. "Broke the rule," said O'Malley, "They
won't let ladies visit between tables in this place." That interested
me, and I asked the head waiter and chief bouncer about it.
"Sure thing," said he, "We let gentlemen change their seats as often
as they want, but it makes too much trouble with the girls. You see a
girl sees a gentleman she likes winking at her from another table. She
shakes her fellow and goes over. That means a fight. It is the
only rule we have," he added with some pride. There were two unusual
women in the place last night; one a mature beauty of forty-five, ♀
I'm sure, with the beauty of a full-blown rose -- twice as wonderful as

at thirty, I'm sure. She looked to have brains and fire; I have been
wondering about her all day. The other was a regular Aubrey Beardsley ty-
type; the only face of that kind I ever saw in real life. O'Malley
couldn't keep his eyes from her; she had the attraction of poison.

I went home to Elsie with Bill Hill. The fire we struck when we
opened the door! "Bill Hill, I want to bat your head off!" Damn you!
No, I won't kiss you. You go to Hell!" Right in front of me, that
pretty pair had a regular brawl that all but came to blows. It was all
because he hadn't telephoned to say that he wasn't coming home to
dinner. It went through all the stages of the regular domestic quar-
rel; there were threats and tears and reproaches, and all before me.
At one, time, she threw her apron over and head and declared that it didn't
make much difference, but he'd be sorry when it was over and she was
gone; at another stage, he said, "Oh, let her cry; it does her good;"
whereupon she blawled out loud like a baby. Then there was a stage of
sulks, followed by a reconciliation and a billing and cooing before
me. The indecency of it! I left them to their kisses, and sneaked
this morning before they got up.

If I give you the impression that this function was a jag, I do
myself wrong. We weren't jagged at all; we were just youthful and full
of adventure. As I look back on it today, it is the first time I have
had the old San Francisco feeling of letting the wind of hap blow
where it listeth since I left California.

Late this afternoon, I went up to see Hyslop and Carrington. H.
is sure a dope. He has lost his power of reasoning; the thing, as all
such do, has taken the edge off his reason. He can't think
straight any more.

Carrington, you may remember, is the man who wrote that book on
medium tricks, which we got from Turner. He is Hyslop's assistant, and

He ex-conjurer for stage and parlors work. He has puzzled me a little.
He is quite young, yet he has had time not only to be a professional
conjurer but a man of education as well. He is tall, straight,
silent, of a great calm and an even balance. As we left the Hyslop
place tonight, he asked me to come over and look at his magical library.
I asked him if he was a bachelor; no, he was a married man -- married
a month. His wife came to the door; and actress appearing on with an
English accent, an overblown devlish beauty, and many affectations.
She siezed me and asked me to have some tea. In the third minute of our
acquaintance, she was at once to inform me that music and painting
was her "line." Luckily, she had no chance to try either on me.
However, they are both going over with me to see Minnie in action on
Saturday afternoon. I want him to see that, so that in case of a libel
suit I can have an expert to tell on the stand how she does it.

Here 's for some more writing before I turn in. You remember that
gold-and-bronze-and-green trick I bought of LeRoy. I have just been
testing it, and I send you one of those messages which, Leroy says, people
pay five dollars for and take home and frame.

the four hundred. Two years later, Jones was in Jack's cell
plucked him by the sleeve. "Do you remember me," "no." You ought to.

Thursday, May 30, 1907.

If my patriotism failed me today, it was because the desire of work
was greater than the desire to remember the dead of the big fight. We
have debated the question whether I am an American. Let that
go; with the American part of me, I rather thrill to Memorial Day, where-
as the fourth of July means only fire works and a joke. But such a
day as I put in to day -- I sat down to this machine at eight and it is
now after nine in the evening; and I have risen only for meals or to
stretch my back. It was the labor of the file; rewriting those three
stories of the medium game to get them in. With a little additional
filing tomorrow morning when I am fresh, I am done with them, I hope.
I am sick of the sight of my own words.

I dined last night at the Cosgraves with Ambrose Bierce, that wild
miner Avirette, beloved old friend of Cosgrave and Bierce, who was with
us awhile at the Atlantic yacht club last summer. Perhaps you remem-
ber -- the one who pulled his gun in the Kale Club to show us the
three notches to mark the Mexicans whom he shot the spring before. Pres-
ent also was Geraldine Bonner. Avirette, feeling that he was in a
highbrowed company, sang rather small; he needs centre stage to do
his best things. Bierce loosened himself a little more than he did at
Albany, and out of his skin came a little of the roaster and toaster
that he is. He told, for example, how he informed Pixley that he
would live to spit on his (Pixley's) grave. "And the beast beat me
by getting cremated," said Bierce. He let off some flashes of pretty,
cynical wit in the course of the evening; I have already confessed to
you that I have a fearfully bad memory for those flashes; the last one
seems always to wipe out the others. When the wine worked, he lashed

out boldly and lit into Hearst, his employer, and Sam Chamberlain,
with whom he seems to have an undying fuel.

Geraldine shows new beauties every time I see her. Maturity
brings, I think, a vast improvement in looks to such a woman. Did you
note, in your one or two meetings, the ways she falls always into
picture poses? It is always a pretty composition. I tried last night
to figure out whether this was nature or an acquired characteristic.
For the life of me I can't tell, but I suspect. That is my criticism of
her; you suspect that she plans out effects, which she carries off with
her eternal paise. Some affected women, even when only slightly affected
as she is, rile me all over; singularly, she has a soothing affect. I
can't imagine myself making love to her, but I can imagine living in
the same house and having my nerves calmed every time I saw her.

XXXXXfXXfXXXXxaxkivelyxanlxmkxyXXXXX All dinners at the Cosgrave house
are merry. That is one supreme talent of Jack Cosgrave; always was in
even the days of his great unhappiness; he is one of the ideal hosts
you read about.

You would absolutely adore that mad, bad, eccentric ric, loveable,
Cosgrave family. Have I ever told you about that tribe, considered as
an entity? I used to go out there to dinner; and they used to fight
with each other, in the most charming, refined, and yet thoroughly
serious way, all through the meal. As I look back on it, I never took
even the slightest pot luck with anything named Cosgrave without
having a good time.

I think now, at the end of this day, that when you tell me how tired you are after one of your full sessions at the typewriter, you speak truth. I am quite ready for bed. By the way, you haven't honored me with a word about your work world without end. Which also reminds me that, skating for diner, I bumped into

clasped his fin, and received a cordial invitation
I have joined the ranks of those as write, I am
of him.

ok one r st today -- enough to skim through little
is all that is advertised; that will be one of the
and die by. where isn't any greater joy, among the
making a new b ook friend which whom life cannot

and what she brings.'

Friday, May 31, 1907.

Before I sleep, I have to tell youa queer thing. Mrs. Soule, the
medium lady of Cambridge, is vindicated. Do you remember that she
made one prophecy concerning me? Is it in your mind(I'm going as
daffy as Hyslop). Do you remember that she said I'd come in upon
a man writing, who would look up and give me an order, something I
was not expecting at the time, an order for a big thing which would
take me across the water? Do you remember that she described the per-
son as a man with iron grey hair, what there was of it, and the top of
his head bald? Also, is there anything that you can add to the epi-
sode?

Because when I came in upon Nicholas Murray Butler, of Colum-
bia University, answering a rushnote received in the morning, I found
him writing hard, signing his name to 1200 diplomas. Also, he is bald
at the top with a grey fringe; also, I hadn't the remotest idea in
God's world why he had sent for me at the suggestion of Mr. Lord of
the Sun, as he said in his note.

"I have to begin what I have to say to you with two 'ifs',"
said he." You remember that Mr. Pulitzer has test us several millions
to found a school of journalism. It was understood that it was not
to be started until after his death. It seems now that he is going to
revoke that condition, although that is not certain. When the plan
was first laid out, our faculty laid out a purely academic plan for the
school. It isn't satisfactory, we all know that. We want a man who
knows journalism from the ground up to go out with that plan, take it
to the great newspaper men, and have them criticise it and give their
views. Then we want a long report from him, setting forth what the pro-
fession thinks, and adding his views. Such a man would have a chance

creep among these pedagogues of Columbia with his pet hobbies and to set his impression of the school. Mr. Lord and the Sun in general recommends you. It will have to be put up to Pulitzer, who is just about on his way from Europe. He may turn down any and every name we put up to him; that is the second if. Do you want to have me put your name before him?" Well, the wind was knocked out of me.

Another new factor in my complicated affairs! I didn't know what to say and no more do I now. It will take at least six months. He will expect me to go to England to see Harmsworth and the other big men over there; it will be a piece of work worth doing for the president alone. Yet it is after all a little bit of a squirrel track. I explained to him my personal perplexities, and it ended by my telling him to pass my name up anyway, and see what Pulitzer has to say. So I am to write an autobiography, setting forth who I am that I should do this thing, and Pulitzer is to expert me. I imagine that he may balk at a Sun man.

The World is on arms, you know, half the time, against the Sun. They don't like our airs of assumption that we are the aristocracy of journalism, and they remember the time when the Sun joshed the World into a whole change of policy. And the Fates may settle it for me in this way: What do you advise, an O lady of wisdom?

To get an outside view upon this thing, I passed it up to Bert Boyden tonight. He was all for it, pointing out the prestige that it would give me. But I am afraid that these would be six months without a line of writing. And I don't want to be sidetracked, at this age of me. I imagine that an offer to join the faculty would follow. That I should refuse, I am sure. In my surprise, I forgot to ask the salary they would pay! I'm getting as much out of my job now as the salary of a full professor; and they may gag at my prices.

It becomes certain that I must start for Chicago next week. By the way, getting back to the main question, ask Frank what he thinks of

Friday, May 31, 1907.

this new proposition.

I turned in the first three medium tales today. I am at the place where I can't judge of them any more; I wait with anxiety to hear what the Collier people will say. I know that they start off rotten, but I was too sick of the whole thing to do that introduction over. It really is a serious moment in my relations with Collier's. If these yarns do not strike them, it's a bad start. And they are so far from a natural method in judging of writing, those people! It always seems to me that Collier's never quite performs what it promises. 'Tis a way it has.

I'm so perplexed over that Butler question that I wish he hadn't asked me! But isn't it a triumphant vindication of the medi umship of Mrs. Soule!

Wednesday, May 29, 1907.

I talked this afternoon with Bob Yard of the firm of Moffatt &
Yard. He sent for me under the impressi on that The Bubble of Dreams
which the American has been advertising so hard, was a novel. When he
dound that it was not, we fell to talking of his business. He says the
there never were so many novels published as this year, and never so few
good ones. Most of them are feelers, books thrown out in want of some-
thing better. A lot of fairly good novels, he says, are gaoing
badly for want of a really supremely good novel in the same season to
pull them up. The production of one good thing helps the other meritor-
ious things and hurts the poor ones.

Ben Greet told me the same thing once of the English stage. Good
things go in cycles for that reason, he says. It is a curious paradox
isn't it?

I am still grinding along on the medium stories, doing the tedious
work of rewriting. Perhaps, after this week, I may have to go to Chicago.
That is as great a centre for the medium thing as Boston, and I am
rather afraid to leave it un uncovered. I shall write the articles
and leave them, trusting to revision if I find anything new in Chicago.

Day before yesterday, I learn, Rob Collier told them at one of his
seventy clubs that he intended to go on with this medium business,
going after the apprantly true as well as the plainly false, so that
my work, it seems to me, is cut out for some time. Eusapia Paladino,
about whose falsity or truth there is the greatest debate, is exhibiting
again in Europe. There are stories of tables split all to pieces by her
rappings. That means that she is worthwhile; it would be odd if this
job turned out to be a jaunt through Europe. Eusapai, you know, lives
in Naples. She is interesting. She begins her seances with some

mystic abracadabra most wonderful to hear, and arguing, on the face of it,
a fake. But there are wonderful tales heard of her -- you see that
I am talking like Hyslop. Which reminds me. I had a long talk with

Hyslop about our visit to Mrs Soule. He says that she is the most
reliable medium since Mrs. Piper and he endorses her unhesitatingly.
When I told him that I didn't get much, he said that it was not wonderful
she hardly ever gave much the first time. I asked him about the cases

where she plainly guessed, like the other professionals. He said
that there was a process of subliminal guessing, which had nothing to do
with the intent to fake, but was purely automatic. I told him about
the business like way in which she addressed the servant who came in to
announce that the séance was over. He said that Mrs. Soule was in the
light trance state in which she is conscious of external as well as
internal impressions. He had a reason for everything, and there was
not the slightest use in the world in making objection to anything. He
is another case of the danger in following this thing. He is quite off
his nut about it.

One of the rem krs he dropped illustrates. He said that he had
been to Mrs. Piper in the morning and received some proofs of identity
from a dead friend. That same afternoon, he visited Mrs. Soule, who
was controlled by the very same dead friend and gave the same proofs.
I pointed out, gently and tactfully, that this might be taken as a
skeptic as showing a blue book collusion between the two mediums.
He said that could not be. Mrs. Piper was in the trance state when
she gave it, and everyone knows that a medium in the trance state
is incapable of receiving external impressions.

Wonderful, wasn't it?

Like everyone who breaks the currents of those unknown seas,
Hyslop is beginning to live with the people of the shadows. When I first
saw him, nearly three years ago, he was pretty sane and logical

Now, he is as much a dope as Funk. It would seem that the almighty has put a spirit of madness at the gate of the unknown. The flaming sword before that paradise is the sword of the distracted mind.

Of Mrs. Soule he said, further: "She is the only honest medium in Boston. Some of the others have occasional powers, but they dilute the milk. My Mrs. Smeed in New York does a great deal of unconscious guess work and is liable to dual personality. She is not very good with strangers. Her husband gets the best of her communications. To him, she has given wonderful things. How do I know that he is telling the truth? Oh, he is an honest fellow and is really worried because of this strange thing which has come upon his wife."

Upon my soul, he, the scientific investigator, the leader of the S. P. R., said these things to me. It simply renews your suspicion of every bit of evidence which they have presented to you, doesn't it?

Somuch for Hyslop. I'm trying to arrange for a sitting of three days with his new love -- Mrs. Smeed, who has supplanted Mrs. Piper in his affections. He tells me that it may be impossible for me to see Mrs. Piper in London. First, I will have to send a glove or a handkerchief that I have worn. Her control will smell of it; and if he doesn't like it, he won't let me in. I asked what the chances would be and he said "about one in ten thousand."

I've finished the ghost story. Also, I have a poem just finished which you shall see some day when I get the courage!

1907

213

Friday night.

PRETTY LITTLE
AUTHORESS TALKS

"I LOVE MY ART," CRIES
INEZ HAYNES
GILLMORE.

BRAZILIAN BORN
BOSTON BRED

WRITING BEST SELLERS
NOT FATAL TO
BEAUTY.

Creator of "June Jeopardy" bears
Striking Resemblance to her
Own Winsome Heroine -- "Hard
Work the secret of my success."

It was such a jolly little flat -- such a pretty, tasteful flat, instient with feminine occupancy. I thought of that as I waited the will of the Irish maid who told me, with a pretty little curtsy, that Mrs. Gillmore would see me in a moment. There was just enough in it for comfort, and not enough to violate the canons of good taste. A book written on a shelf, filled with tasetfully selected volumes that showed how they had been loved and cherished; a lounging chair, a large engraving of Boticelli's Flora, a cabinet of curious workmanship, filled with small bisque and porcelain figures -- this last the only bizarre spot in the room. For the rest, it was in the aristocratic suburb of Brookline, and the children, just coming from school, were whooping along the streets outside. I pondered these things as I waited. Surely, a gracious feminine personage ruled here, I thought as I waited.

"The gentleman from the Herald?" said a soft voice at the doorway.

She had come so quietly that she took me by surprise. I was standing in the presence of a little, dark, woman, who smiled at me

It was such a
instict with f
the will of the Ir
that Mrs. Gillmore
in it for comfort,
A book EKELVESXXXXX
that showed how the
a large engraving d
filled with small b
bizarre spot in t
suburb of Brookline
whooping along the
waited. surely, a
as I waited.

"The gentleman

She had come
standing in the pre

from a pair of hazel eyes. I call her dark; but they are kinds of
darkness and other kinds. There is the dark of tropical midnights,
a-quiver with the magic lights of fire-flies. That was the kind of
darkness, I thought, that she possessed. Such a slight, slender,
girlish little thing. One did not see where, in that graceful little
head, crwned with its aureole of brown hair, she found room to conceive
the work which is sweeping every other best seller off the boards --
for I was indeed in the presence of Inez Haynes Gillmore, whose latest
novel, "June Jeopardy," has swept everything else in the line of a best
seller off the boards and brought back to Boston some of the prestige
possessed in the time of the Concord school.

"And so this is Mrs. Gillmore," I said. I found myself seated,
I knew not how. Mrs. Gillmore drooped herself in a graceful pose on
the green sofa. Every movement she makes is instinct with grace.

"I suppose you have come to interview me," she said. "You must be
kind to me, for this is the first time that I have ever had my interview
taken. Dear me, why should the public be interested in little me?"

"The interest that people always have in 'looking behind the scenes'
I replied. "They want to know something of the life and ideals of the
woman who has made the whole world dance toramance."

"I am afraid," she said, with a little smile playing over a wonder-
fully full and rosy mouth, "that they will be disappointed if they look
behind the scenes and find nothing there. That is what my life has been
--- nothing but my work."

"Do you compse with a pencil?" I asked.

"No, always with a typewriter. I find that easier and more
convenient. Besides, it is the modern way. I believe that one should

Cling to everything modern. I am, in fact, a firm disciple of modernity!

"What are your favorite authors?" I asked.

"The pronoun is well chosen," she responded, "Gelett Burgess and Will Irwin."

"From your appearance, one would scarcely think that you were a daughter of Boston," I said.

"No more am I, for though I call Boston my home and though I had 47 ancestors killed in the Revolution, I was born in Brazil. I am a daughter of the tropics." A daughter of the tropics! Ah, that was the thing which had been vaguely, impalpably, running through my mind. Where except from Brazil did she get the almost Spanish grace and fire which animated eye, cheek, and throat? "Yet your intellect is the product of Boston," I suggested.

"It is good of you to say so. Yes, I am a product of the Boston public schools and of Radcliffe College. My parents, although in comfortable circumstances, believed intensely in the mission of the public schools, and I took the regular course, graduating from the Boston Normal school. Then I went to Radcliffe. Dear old Radcliffe! Ah, those were happy days!" Her eyes assumed a far away expression. It was plain that she was moved.

"You enjoy your writing?" I asked. The question brought her out of here revery. In a moment, she was all animation.

"Madly!" she said. "After all, what is life but art? What is art but life seen through a temperament." I caught some of her enthusiasm, and found myself chatting with her as an old friend about books and music, of which, she says, she is passionately fond.

"You play, do you?" I asked.

"No, I have never dared trust my fingers to the interpretation of

["to an interpretation of the grand old masters. I appreciate, but I never tried to render. My husband -- \"\n\n\"Ah, I was coming to that!\" I said.\n\n\"You should know him. He won my heart and", "\"Ah, I was coming to that!\" I said.\n\n\"You should know him. He won my heart and I would have said that!\" I said.", "\"Ah, I was coming to that!\" I said.\n\n\"You should know him. He won my heart and I would have said that!\" I said.\n\nHe won my heart and I would have said that! He won my heart and while we were students, he a student of life and me a mere student of letters. He is a blonde,\" she added inconsequentially. That delightful feminine", "\"You should know him. He won my heart and I would have said that!\" I said.\n\nHe won my heart and I would have said that! He won my heart and while we were students, he a student of life and me a mere student of letters. He is a blonde,\" she added inconsequentially. That delightful feminine\n\nHe is a blonde,\" she added inconsequentially. That delightful feminine\n\ninconsequence is not the least charm of a personality that radiates fem-\n\ninity. I felt at once that Mr. Gillmore is a very lucky fellow.\n\nBut it was time to go. An hour had fled by like a moment in her\n\ncharming presence. But as I reached the head of the sta", "But it was time to go. An hour had fled by like a moment in her\n\nback.\n\nback.\n\n\"Say,\" she said, blushingly and prettily, \"Do you think I'm pretty?\"\n\nI leave it to the reader to judge.\n\n\"Say,\" she said, blushingly and prettily, \"Do you think I'm pretty?\"", "\"Say,\" she said, blushingly and prettily, \"Do you think I'm pretty?\"\n\nI leave it to the reader to judge.\

Monday.

Very tied. I passed all of this blessed day in getting pho-
tographs of the medium apparatus taken. Sullivan, who is in Hapgood's
chair, told me that he liked the stuff, and so I guess it goes. And
tomorrow, O horrid bent, I start for Chicago for a week. I must also
run down into Indiana. I simply don't dare to start this stuff about
the medium game without going out there and seeing what there is to see
in the centre of the trade. I shall be at the Auditorium Annex, and mail
will reach me there until next Sunday. I hope that the verbum has been
grasped by the sap.

I don't know what her I told you or not, but I sent the ghost story
to Harper's. Tonight, Macarthur of that firm, to whom I sent it dir-
ect, stopped me at the club and spoke to me kind words thereof. I
was encouraged until he went on to tell me that Harper's believed great
things of my fiction and saw a future for me, whereupon I knew that I
was in the midst of an editorial jolly. I'll bet that if I had asked
him what I had written he couldn't have told me. He talked for
some time. He gaily solcited a novel. I told him that I had one but
wanted some sonsequtive time to write it, and he wanted to know if
Harper's couldn't make an arrange to slay me while I was? I
told him per se, but he held me, per se, for I knew the jolly, wasn't I
ever one of those situated things that can only be leged into?

I toiled today with the official photographer of Collier's, an
Englishman with brass unlimited, the very pattern and type of the regular
professional newspaper photographer. Never have I known a craft so cut
off from a pattern. He called back beautiful old days to my mind; memories
of Stanley, who went up the Carquinez Power ahead of me carrying thither
a bad heart; and Haley the Mutt, and one Standish, who, at a military
mass, leaned over the altar rail as the Host was elevated, tapped the
priest on the shoulder, and said: "I sye, old man, 'old that pose, won't

Monday.

of this blessed day in getting pho-
tus taken. Sullivan, who is in Hapgood's
the stuff, and so I guess it goes. And
I just also

you?" Some day when I learn how to write fiction I shall make a
character sketch of Haley.

O horrid hent-- here is to pack!

I usually look forward to a hike, but I don't to this one. I have a
feeling against Chicago.

Sunday;

You didn't quite grasp, I take it, the proposition that Mr. Butler, higbrow, put up to me. I was so full of the Mrs. Aoule stuff that I probably wasn't plain on the main proposition. The fact is that he didn't tell me to take a job there. They do NOT know where they are at on this college of journalism; no one has been able to frame up a satisfactory plan. So they wanted me to take six months, travel through the United Staes and London, and examine ino the thing, getting the opinions of the big journalists, and report the same to them at length, together with my own ideas; also, to plan out the work and lay out a curriculum. That might lead if I wanted it to a place on the teaching force and probably to the office of dean, but that is only a guess. What if so?

wanted is six months of travel among the big men of the craft get-
ting their views, and a full report together with a tentative plan of
studies. However, the thing doesn't look so good to me as it did at
first. I wait with calm the decision of Pulitzer. George Mallon, whom
I asked about it, frosted the whole thing, saying that the profession
refused to take it as anything but a joke and an ad for Pulitzer.
I can't remember that Butler took out his watch as he spoke to me.
Perhaps he did. I didn't remember that part of Mrs. Aoule's tale.

I went yesterday afternoon, having missed the Carringtons who were
going with me to see Minnie Williams, to visit that cousin of Piexotto's
who is Will Adams. She was in a Jew flat in the upper West side, with
an expensive and affected Jewess cousin. In the course of the afternoon,
some more of 'em dropped in, and presently I discovered to my horror
that I was not only at a tea but at a Jew tea. They were loud, affected
pretentious. So was the maid of the tales, but one forgets it on her,
so full is she of unthinking, story-telling, doing life. It is great

the party, to old them medium tales, and made them come into the front room, wher, with the portieres, I ran them thr ough a seance that would have convinced many and all but convinced Mrs. Gordon Grant, wife of the illsutratér, who was present. ZShe really believed that it was spirits! Maida is sure getting to be abit of a byomide. I always saw it in her; she was o'erfond of s assiety for sasiecy's sake, and gloried in her women's club offices. Now s he is martied to one of that ilk and he multiplies the tendency.

And here and now to plug out fiction for Collier's. Editorial I mean; though between fiction and a Collier editorial there is little to chose; so I let it stand.

I can't quite agree with you about the current McClure's. There are in it only two features that I planned for it. The Profile tale is the one that I offere d in exchange for the Bubble of Dreams and upon which I was bilked. As for the Roseboro' story, while I recognized that it was good psychology, I wasn't for it, believing that it was far too attenuate for a magazine like McClure's. Things of that kind must be whoppers, like the Second Class Passenger, to go. Maybe it's s ubtle, I dinnaw.

Tuesday;

Tye long trail the hard trail, the trail we all must follow
till the guiver of our pulses end and the nerve may thrill no more!
Which means that I'm off for dull Chicago in the marning! I start, in
fast, at half past three today; and, having just packed my trunk, I
am weary and in vile humor. Later, it is for me to pick and choose
trains, comparing price and speed; but on this first trip I choose the
adventure of the fastest and most dangerous train in the United States
--- the eighteen hour twentieth century limited. I shall plunge among
thieves and dupes as soon as I get there; and here's hopping for adventure!

This morning, Charles Belmont Davis had me on the phone. He said
that Richard Harding wanted to talk to me about this grafter business,
and WESUxxxx was disappointed that I was going to Chicago. I asked if
he meant that he had some stuff to give me, and Davis said no, Dick
wanted some stuff out of me! From that, I take it, somehow, that he has
heard of my medium tales which I have been spreading about Collier's, and
that he wants to get some of that stuff for fiction -- wherein he is
a fooled one. However, I am to go to lunch with him when he returns.

The cab waits at the castle gate, I buckle my annu-
and go!

Thursday morning.

I don't know when I go to Washington. I don't know when I go to Washington. Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow. I must find one or two Pillars of Finance, damn them, before I go on. Yesterday, I really worried in the office. I had four thousand or more photographs for the medium tale to illustrate with running comments. So I sat and sweltered in the strange Collier shop, where everyone seems to have every job about the place. An hour on the track of the Y. M. C. A., and dinner; then a quick jump to get hold of my old friend Harry Raliegh, erstwhile a San Francisco, Bohemina Club, dissolute companion, and take him to a dark seance of the Rev DeWitt Hough, the most wierdly faking of all the professional materializing people. I'm getting so that those things bore me dreadfully; never was I so weary of anything. Harry was full of naive thrills. He never saw anything of the kind before, and he is a simple minded person. He tells me that if he had been touched on the face at the time when the lights went out, he would have yelled out loud. There was a prize dope two seats away. During the a frightful, mischievous impulse struck me, and I yielded. Leaning quietly and stealthily to the right, I patted him on his bald head with the open hand. He cried out in amaze, and talked about that spirit pat all the evening. He thought it was his mother. She used to pat him that way, he said.

The American isto hand, with The Bubble of Dreams looking very well on the front pages. I suppose, however, that you have it by this time. I will now relate to you a fact which will make your Country in the Beads loom well. That tale of mine got its quick and certain

acceptance now on its merits but solely on the fact that it was less
than 2500 words long, and these editors love a very short story. Damn
editors! I suppose that they will stick it on the back pages among
the little stores of real life, which is a great classification for
such a tale as that, je ne pense pas. I stick to my original idea on
that story; the skill was not equal to the conception. You(and believe
me that I say this not in flattery) would have made a wonderful thing of
that through cumulative suggestion. It is a funny thing when an idea
is better than a story with me! However, it is sold; and that leads
me to say that I've taken one hurdle. That is the first story I ever
wrote which was wholly my own. To have my name go onto the Bubble
is a deception of a gullable public.

Turning from Liretaure to Life, I wish to mention something that
I have been concealing in my bosom offer. Just before I started for
Chicago, I started a physical regeneration. What with the inactivity
of the McClure desk, and the rick food, wines and drinks of a New York
season, I had become a thing disgusting to myself and dangerous to
society. I've been hard at it, denying myself(except for one fall
drink, and even denying myself that when I could. This matter of
getting into condition requires a lot of self denial; thirst, which
you dare not quench, is one of its greatest tortures. Every glass of
water keeps on just so many ounces. I walked furiously and did strenuous
calisthenics on the trip, and since I got back I have done a hard hour
every day, followed by a hated swim, in the Y. M. C. A. I stripped
well over 185 when I started, and yesterday I just tiddled the bar at
178. There are still nearly eight pounds to go before I draw myself
to the right point, and each extra pound comes harder than the last.
But there are really a few muscles apparant. A good, strong, Swede

rubs me down after I bathe. The delicious languor after a hard run
and a lively rub down is a thing that no woman may know.

Every day, after I leave his hands, I say to myself: There goes one
dinner of last winter!"

They have a boxing instructor there, a good, strong professional.
If, after I return from Washington, I learn that I am to stay in New
York for a fortnight or so, I am going to hire him to polish my style a
little, and thus get some really lively exercise. I suppose that He'll
beat the block off me, for near sighted eyes are poor boxing eyes.

You discourage me when you speak of Preston. Alas, I fear that I
shall never rise to a proper wearing of thirteen dollar lavendar.

Your thrice welcomed latter, lady, requires many replies. First,
as to my elusive address while I was away. When I left for Indiana-
polis, the whole thing was uncertain. It might be that I would have to
rest there only between trains. Then came that telegram from the office,
telling me to look up Francis in Chicago. That was what took me
back to Smoketown. And you overlooked a passage in my last letter from
Chicago, wherein I told you that in three hours or so I would be taking

Please send me Frank's Boston address. Failing that now, please
tell him that I have to hang onto those books until I write the fourth
article, which is delayed by the necessity of going to Washington on
this damned by Heaven pairbanks tale. The book I bought for him,
I am going to send to him, through you, this blessed hour. If a friend
of mine only knew what devotion, what heavenly love, it implies in me
to do up a package, gets stamps upon it, and get it into the mail! Did
my friends only know it, I am sure that it would be better if I had
a story with Dido and Pythia, and all the other ortal exampers.
Now take that too. There isn't any reason why I couldn't have

wrapped and mailed that thing on my travels. I thought of it twenty
times, only to dread it. It isn't the great tasks that make life hard,
I find; it is the small chores. When I look my destiny squarely in the
face, I find that this is the thing which keeps me from the stars of
Preston. Ah me, I fear that I am cherishing a hopeless ambition!

You wrote asking for medium slang. It occurs to me at this moment
that this book is freighted with that same slang. If Frank is kind, he
will let you read it.

The medium articles are set to begin in the first number in August
and to run through serially. I have an idea which I am urging on
Collier's and which will make me travel through the Atlantic cities,
even Boston. I found years ago in San Francisco that the poor man,
who, being in straits, has to raise money through the pawn shop,
pays interest of from 6 per cent to 500 per cent a year for his money,
while the rich man, with Property, pays only 6 per cent. We are so
aPharasaical, nostros Americanos, that we won't look the thing squarely
in the face and let the municipalities run the pawn shops as they do in
Latin countries. In spite of the fact that it has to do with business,
I like this yarn.

And here's to go about with High Finance.

Friday;

I am off to Washington on the midnight train, and shall be there in all probability until Tuesday. Boston papers please copy. In fact, it is a cinch that I shall be there until Tuesday. Address Hotel

I learned last night that vice pays. Sin is its own reward; and all the other Oscar Wilde reversals. Behold, when I had finished my work, I found myself at the Sun; and it was near to dinner time. I went to dinner with Hill and Joe Fox. It was very hot. We decided that it was a fine night to go to a roof garden show. That was all right, but Hill had a little, scrub University of California dinner to Benjamin Ide Wheeler to cover. "I'll get hold of Bennie Idea," I said, and get him to tell all he knows. We'll write the tale together, and let it off in no time." Which we did. I went in, talked it over with the old man in the face of thirty Berkeleyites, got three quarters of a column on football and the manner in which the Western universities had got through the earthquake, and slid out with Hill. In half an hour from the time we entered, we had sent three quarters of a column to Boss Clark, and Hill was free. Wheeler was kind enough to remember my jinks and to say some good words thereabouts.

The show was the Jardin de Paris on the New York Roof. I have never seen a better summer vudeville. There was a turn which would have tickled Frank foolish. It was called "a night in a London concert hall:" and besides being a burlesque on the traditional London music hall show, it had a heap of knockabout by the people in the boxes. It was swat, bang, biff all the way through, and one laughed in spite of his better nature. O'Malley joined us there; and we put into effect our plan for having the Sun and the Times play baseball, by appointing O'Malley manager and me to write the story with the help of O'Malley and Denison.

that should be a really great function. The Sun is loved along the Tenderloin; and it is our purpose to have every show girl in New York there rooting for the paper. Then, of course, we adjourned to Jack's, where we sat until very late having man converse on all the affairs of the flesh and the spirit.

You may wonder what this has to do with virtue. I will tell you. Every man Jack of us save O'Malley alone was on the water cart. We sipped a little mineral water, and let it go at that. Finally, at the very last, we busted training just for then, and each man drank one half glass of cream ale.

I woke before nine o'clock this morning, as sick as I ever was in my life. It was one of my old-fashioned sick head aches, which strike me twice a year and Wallace once a month. But this was an uncommon one. I don't remember that I was ever so sick in my life. I had to call a nigger boy from the elevator to go out and get things to stop my violent wretching, and I had to stand up because of the way my head acted when I lay down. If all the aftermaths of jags I ever had had been rolled together, they wouldn't have reached half of that sickness now. I fell asleep from exhaustion at eleven, and woke at one, weak but able to navigate. After that, I sure did navigate down the financial district, rounding up magnates. I found a great many more difficulties than I ever thought of before. It appears that Morgan hates Fairbanks, because Fairbanks gave him the double cross; and the story of that double cross is a great one against Fairbanks -- if it can only be confirmed. Morgan is impossible of sight to a plain Literary Person; but all the men about him denied the story point blank and spoke in flattering terms of Fairbanks. My course ed me to Kellogg, the old Wall Street man of the sun. He laid his advice down flat. "Dont you try to get anything out of them," said he. "There is

no chance that they will say a word against him. They want to beat
Roosevelt so much and so hard that they will do anything to get in a
man who they think resembles McKinley. Fairbanks is that kind of a
man. He is the Street's candidate. If he had raped Morgan's virgin
daughter, Morgan would say good words for him." Small encouragement
that; but I believe he is right -- I like to think ill of Wall Street --
and I am going to give over the raking of New York and start for Wash-
ington tonight, as per program. There, I shall sit and take down
dull facts, to a duller conclusion, for three or four days. Wash-
ington in summer, when Congress is away, is very dull and so hot that
the asphalt melts.

Butler writes that Pulitzer wants to postpone action on his school
until Fall. The Cosmopolitans has sent for me and urged me, via Sam
Chamberlain, who has gone to be the ditter thereof, to take service with
them. Lorimer has just sent a man to give me the regular jolly and
ask me to see him about some work I intend to do. So when the time
comes for me to sling Collier's; and that time will be as soon as I
can get comfortably through the medium tales; I shall have plenty in
sight. Yes, also, Cosgrave, provided I get through the paper before
the end of the summer, wants me to go to all the great American summer
resorts, looking them over and writing a josh comparison about them.
There's a kind of a vacation on pay in that!

I'm a little dizzy up on top yet, and here's to pack, so good
night, lady of soft laughter, and here's hoping that the New Willard,
Washington, will be honored by a wee bitey in your well-known hand.

Benson and Denison.

New York, Monday night.

It has been a frightfully hot day 94 in the shade when I left Washington; and Socratically showing my contempt for the heat, I took a long run through Monument Park, where Teddy rides and people are supposed to do eccentric things. I done it apurpose, figuring that the hotter the day the more weight would come off that stomach which is hereby to have no rest until it takes itself and departs. But I think from the way I felt going home on that hot train, that it was a bit too much on that day. Anyhow, I'm a losing.

Last night, I was upped with Gilson Gardner, the intense, earnest,acker who is writing this story, and his wife. She is a quaint, muck rousful old-fashioned gal, with a single forehead, a delicate oval of a face, a quaint old-fashioned smile, and a pair of compensals of the un-American snobbery. She has a wide and pious manner in which the very humblest seriousness of manner. She is a little too much with something like which prevails in Washington, of the ape the great. she says that poor little clerks,

twelve hundred a year, never invite friends h ome informally to dinner. Instead, they save their pennies for a whole year and give a big dinner, for w ich they hire an imported butler and extra servants and sich. She is the wife of one newspaper man, the daughter of another, the grand daughter of another, and what she doesn't know about the game no man knows.

This morning, I h unted up Ira Bennett, editorial writer on the Post, now , but once star reporter on the Chronicle when I was a cub. A first-rate newspaper wr iter too. He got out his little auto runabout, and trundled me through the city. It was the first time I8d seen

Washington as a whole; and I caught the splendiferousness of the way
that Frenchman L'Enfant adapted himself to the site. It was a
newspaper man's rubber neck expedition; every man described according
to his newspaper value. Bennett used to be engaged to Maysie in the
days when she lived in Ensenada. We failed to make a hit with me when
he referred to that a fair rather sneeringly. Now no woman could have
done that, I think.

Do you know that if it had n't been for this hiking through the
world I should have asked you if you'd let me come up and see the Harvard
Classday with you? That is one of the things in this here East
that I esteem worth saving. Only tuberculosis prevented me from being
a Star Performer in a Harvard Class day. I can well see how you cried.
I think I have told you that if I should see the commencement girls
at Vassar or Smith, I should weep uncontrollably. In fact, I have the
feeling that the thing would be too great an emotional strain for me
to bear. Curiously, I have tried to analyze it; and I find that my tears
would spring from a source entirely different from yours. For your
letter shows that it was the feeling of the consummation for so many
families, poor and rich, which caused your tears. With me, I think,
it is the tragedy of passing youth. There they are, so young, so fair,
so good to see and to be. Never again will they be so; years will come,

creeping, deadening years; and all this pageantry of triumphant youth
must become the parade of the conquered at the car of time. I know that
we'll quarrel there; you will tell me that I am harpy on my folly
again; but God how I do love youth and how I dread age! Do you
know why I am fighting the stomach again? It is because, cleaning my
nails the other day, I found that they were no more smooth cylindrical
They are beginnin' to be parallelled with lines; to develope brittle

planes; and that appearance, I have observed, is characteristic of
the nails of old men. I nearly cried when I saw that; it is my first
sign of the coming of senile decay, as the first grey hair to a woman;
and it set me in a panic to fighting the dread thing; to hold it off
as long as I can. It is all very well to say that I shall be always young
you can't make me believe that when my body refuses to respond and when
my hairs are grey or gone! I refused to be reasoned with, either
-- this isn't a thought; it is an emotion!

I've got a week of hard writing before me. I want to stop the
regular Collie r connection as soon as may be; there are too many
offers of go d things in sight. And I'm really tired and wilted what
with Washington, the run, and the tropi al train; and it is to bed.
Good night, sweet princess.

Monday Morning.

Back again to gaiest Manhattan. I loped in at seven o'clock,
a pattern and picture for all the dirt in the world, and made a set
for mail and a bath tub. There were thousands of letters, most of them
of disagreeable portent. "As to the Blind" was back from Harper's,
with an advising, patronizing not e which I send along to you for the
good that it will do. I'm inclined to think that they are right; I
have meintained all along that the idea was too big and delicate for my
present literary skill. I shall send it on its travels as soon as may
be. Then there was a letter from Collier's saying that the medium
tales are diffuse and will be better for sentence condensation. That get
me where I live, for I hate to have my style impugned. As a matter of

fact, though, I found when I sat down to write after the McClure
rumpus that I was a bit diffuse of mind; that the sentences came
no longer in form. That mixture with a maniac took a lot of edge off
my thinker, I believe. Also, the letters contained one from Ike Russell
an old college mate, of Salt Lake. He saw S. S. McClure, who gave
him a McClurish jolly about a great series concerning the Mornon
church. In the course thereof, S. S. said that I was too big a man
for the piffling work that he had for me to do; also that my brain had
never recovered from the shock of that earthquake stunt; Russell wrote
with some solicitude concerning my condition. Hallie writes that they
had a severe earthquake in the night; and that Billie insisted on
looking under the bed in the morning to see who shook it.

I slid into the club for dinner, very dirty (you should see the
bath tub this morning; it is lined with Chicago and Lake Sh re Limited)
There was David Bispham. Some one had told him that I was working on
the mediums, and that scared him into action. He is daffy on the sub-

jett. He talked for an hour and a half of his experiences, lining
out a tale in which I recognized silicon flaps, reaching rods, luminous
paint, and "breaks." Bispham, in manner, action, voice, and the
capacity for talking about himself, is the typical actor.

In our reach down the Hudson, on a glorious June day, I thought
a lot about that novel; not the Munsey venture, but the serious one
which I lined out to you. I really want to get at it; the tying has
taken unto itself a way of forming in the mind; and in my head I wrote
off the first chapter. Now that this tale has come back, Harper's
may not be so keen as it was for me to write a special novel on Salary;
but I'd sure like to have a chance to fail on that piece of work!

By the way; Zona Gale has just written a novel, which I saw on a
bookstall in Chic ago. I don't remember the name nor anything
about it, except that one chapter is called "The Lady of Kingdoms."
Did she ever hear of yours. And dear my madame, this serves as a gentle
introduction to a gentle reminder that I'd like very much to know what
has come of some of those tales whose contents you keep a mystery from
me; and especially the xxxxxxxx the xxxxxxxx Country in the Beads and
the Reef Builders. It is a great compliment to you, if you only knew
it, that I remember the titles, seeing that usually I cannot remember
the name of anything!

And now down to Collier's to review these two weeks.

Tuesday, June 18, 1907.

Please you, lady, list; I have been in on a record. At half past
ten yesterday, I started down the line with "as to the Blind" under my
coat; I was debating wherein to drop it. I thought that I'd trypos-
grave on a venture, he being a friend. Therefore I left it with Hall,
Cosgrave not being in. At half past twelve, I was at the club. In
came George Baker. "That was a hullyghost story of yours. I am stuck on
it." "Well, I hope that you'll accept it." "Oh, it is alrea y accepted

and slated for the earliest possible publication!" That's the
world's record for acceptance, reminding you of O Henry's ideal editor.
So no more of that!

Gilbert White, who is not afraid of me any longer, seeing that I
he thinks I think he didn't write that knocking letter I have that
as a private tip) reminded me that we had an old engagement to go yo
Pandora, the psychic crystal gazer who has been cleaning up the Four
Hundred and of whom mighty things are spoken. He was scheduled to
sail on the morrow, he said; and this would be the last chance. So
he telephoned and made an engagement for half past four. We arrived;
but there was some hitch; and we waited for some time ine her outer
room. It was a high brow spot; books scattered here and there. We
opened some of them. Conspicuous was Salome; and decadent books pre-
dominated. there was a slight scent of decadence about the whole mess.
Most of the books, as we looked them over to kill time, were inscribed
"To Lady Margery." Gilbert explained that she is a real English Lady.

And presently, the folding doors glided open and she came. She nearly
took my breath away. I didn't get her all at once; I had a chance as you
will learn to study her later; but I'll tell here as though at first glaze
what I saw.

The arcade I was watching shone as with a great light from her
hair. Never have I seen its like. It is the real Titian red, spun
red gold, so red that it hurts the eyes, so golden that God is in it.
Its texture is finer than the spider's most attenuated web, and there

is enough of the treasure to fill the treasuries of kings. It coils
about head, brows and neck. She has the peach and cream complexion
which is given to the specially favored red-haired woman, a set of dim-
ples, a face a little too fleshly, a mouth a little too full, shapely
teeth, a mose straight and fair but a little too thick. What peculiarity
funns all the way through, and divides her by a narrow hair from beauty;
her figure partakes of it, and her hands are just a little fat and
coarse. When you have looked at a little time, you see that beauty was
fading. There are no more pleasant and animating juices under the skin;
the face is forming its ridges and wrinkles; and it is a face that was
made for youth, not for age; one in whom youth is everything. She
speaks with a gentle, very refined, English accent; the music of her
speech is good for the ear.

Thirst divine, but those eyes! They will be with her always, and
they are marvels. A little oblique, a little too long, the wierd con-
trast of Oriental eyes in an Anglo-Saxon complex ion -- the coloring is
their most wonderful trait. Have you ever seen eyes that are both blue
and tawny? These are. Also, the whites are as clear as the new milk,
and there are spots and lights in them. She is surrounded with the aroma
of some strange perfume; something like Chinese punks; and after one has
watched her awhile, he gets the aroma of strange sins; there is something
inde finable about her which makes Salome and the perfume that is not
a perfume appropriate.

Had Frank seen this person, I make no doubt
that there would have been another character in "The Heart Line."

The xagxaxdxuuxk: Gib: whitexxxxxxx

I read my beloved "Sonets from the Portugese," the only sane and normal book on the table, while Gib sat with her an unconscionable time. When he came out, he was dots and daffs. He said that she had done wonders with him. She had asked him right out of the air, "Who is George Baker?" that same being one of his closest friends. She asked also "Who are Adelaide and Margaret and what is the matter with their father?" Gib says that the ladies named are two sisters who are great friends to his. She loaded him to the gunwales with prophecy; all kinds of things are going to happen; he is to marry in two years and to be stabbed though not fatally by a freind in four years.

This morning, I wason the job early. She was there in the splendor of that matchless bonnett. For a half an hour she read my palm and gazed into the crystal, and I must say in the spirit of fairness that as a second sightexpert she was on the hog special. She named about twenty people of whom I never heard; but she ran them right off the reel in convincing fashion. I was assured that there was a John in my family and also a Charles. All kinds of things like that went totally wrong. But toward the end, we petered a little on the psychic game; and twas then we began a talkfest in which she told the story of her life. I pass it on for what it vaut. She is a daughter of nobility, she says. She is an English Catholic, educated by Jesuit tutor. When I asked her how she reconciled her faith with this spirit business, she side-stepped, saying that the Catholic faith is the one and only thing when you are introuble. Any way, she had marital troubles and was divorced. In British society, that means ostracism, or partial ostracism. She found that her freinds took care to invite her only to quiet things. Now all this time she had been seeing things, mostly for the amusement of her friends. At this point, she decided to go into the business. After getting a start in London, she came over here, where there is not

so muck joy of living, but where there is a lot more money and she
doesn't have to be cut by her set. As she warmed up, she got quite
familiar and pretentious in her references to the King and the Court.
There was a queer contrast between the impressive vulgarity of this and
the well-bred speech of her -- the same contrast that there was be-
tween her figure and her hands. She is a queer mixture.

An awful fate has come upon me. I have to drop everything and
put into shape the second Faibanks article, the one over which I had that
Hell of a time in Indianapolis. it is all big business deals and rail-
way mergers and things. How I shallhate it! Itwill necessitate a n-
other immediate hike -- to Washington on Thursday. In the meantime,
I am awfully eager to hear how things have been going with you; and just
a wee note dropped tomorrow will r ach me before I leave Thursday morn-
ing for Washington!

Tuesday night.

Billy Erb gotback today. He breezed in, full of Goldfield and the West; and all this day when I was not raking Wall Street after our dear vice-president, I was associating with him. Then, toward evening, I met a lonely amn of my acquaintance. The time was ripe (in a strange way it was like my adventure at Portsmouth) and he opened his heart and to all you in XXXXXXXX general terms some day. When a man comes to you with his heart open like that, you can do nothing but listen and help; it is a Christin duty and an artistic duty; but it so broke into the day and night that I have no time for the Log record of my meeting with Billy and of the wholly charming things said and done of him. That child of the world!

That for the next instalment, since I must write a bunch of editorials for Collier's. This is to say that if Rufus comes in on Thursday morning's boat, he'll want to breakfast with some one since I take it that, in the law of probabilities and trains, his mother's train will not come in until the middle of the day. And if that is as I think, it will overcharm and overwhelm Handsome Willie to have him breakfast with me. And to that end I enclose a note to Rufus.

Dear Rufus;

Inez tells me that you are coming to town Thursday morning to get your mother. She says that you will come down on the night boat. I know that in the law of such things her train probably won't arrive here until the middle of the morning; and it will do me the greatest good in the world if you will breakfast with me at the Club. And if that suits you, just call me up at my house as soon as the boat gets in. I am at the Raymond, 42 East 28, and the telephone number is

2565 Madison.

If I don't hear from you by nine o'clock, say, I will know that it is all off. And otherwise, I remain,

Yours respectfully,

Wednesday night.

Behold me tonight eliminating carelessnesses from the medium stories and boiling down sentences. I am afraid that Collier's was right; they were careless. I haven't yet got away from an S. S. McClure diffuseness. After tomorrow, there must be a terrific bust of work on that Fairbanks yarn; then must I write the last medium tale; and then it is done for the present and I am going to try to break away from Collier's. Oh, no; there is no pique at all. I like the Collier people pretty well. But you remember that I enlisted largely in anticipation of that Sunday Magazine. That, I am full sure, has fallen by the wayside, and there is no reason why I must keep on their pay roll. If I stay there, they can print only so much of my stuff; and they will print the less since they will print a great deal of my brother's and it can't be made all Davis and Irwin. The rest of the time, it will be necessary for me to be doing scratching on some one's else story; that Fairbanks business is typical. If I break loose, I can write for them by the piece whenever they have something for me to do; and I am free to take some of those other jobs of writing which are being held out to me and to get my name (this is something of a consideration) into several periodicals instead of one. I can make as much money that way, probably more. That is the whole way of it.

But about Billy Erb. He stood in Wall Street, rubbing at the airport, just then passing to the confusion of the curb market. And when I looked, I knew that the old Billy Erb had come back to us. He was slim, compact, sunbrowned again; his eye was clear; he held the old smile, he looked again as he looks in that graduation picture. The Broadway influence which had sent him chasing unessentials, had sloughed off. He

was the Gascon de gain, ruffling, tilting with fate. And wasn't he full
of Goldfield, and didn't he paint a picture of a frank and merry man-
life which make your mouth water, in three minutes he had pulled out
of his pocket the inevitable specimen, and told me how he let his share
go for ten thousand, worth six hundred thousand now. He is running his
own auto; he tells me that he would be worth $75,000 if he should close
out and clean up now; but of course he is going to hang on and be worth
a million next year.
And the tale of that camp ( As diffent as I can
imagine from the mining camp in which I was brought up; they gathered
250 men for their University Club the first day out. You have heard
of Death Valley. That is two hundred miles away. It is conquered;
they scorch through it in their autos. Billy wants us all to come out
and live on the desert and get rich and be men. At lunch, Jack Reynolds
butted in. Billy was talking and tilting free. He was the Harvard
Freshman again. Jack, who enjoys Billy this side madness, tipped me
the wink. By and by, seeing what was in the mind of Jack, I said to
Billy, with a serious face: "Billy, I'm tired of the East. I'd damn well
like the joy of running a paper in a gold mining camp." "Bill!" says I
Billy, "You talk like a man-sized man now. you come out with me. by
God, I can buy the paper there for fifteen thousand, and you'll make
the record of your life. Is it a go?" We waited until he had forgot,
and then Jack spoke up: "Billy, " said he, "This being counsel for a rail-
road doesn't fit. It isn't a man's game. I'd like to go out there,
but I shouldn't care to practice after all. What I'd like is a seat on
the bench." "Come along! " says Billy. "I'll make you rich in a year
and in another I'll land you a judge!" Hearing that Billy was here
hot from Goldfield, Collier's passed me out a memorandum of some mining
fakers on whom they wanted me to get the goods, and asked me to talk to

Billy about them. "To Hell with you," said Billy, "And to hell with
your damned old muckraking sheet. That muck rake has pretty near
spoiled a good camp. Denison came out and printed pictures of a lot of
nasty little hovels and called them typical Codlfield residences.
Why, they've got houses as fine as anytown in the West. That bloody
muckraking is ruiling the country!" When he left for the West, he
had Lincoln Steffens on one pedestal and Ida Tarbell on another.

It was at dinner at the Griffou that I received that extraordinary
confidence at which I hinted afterward. It was during the dinner, and
after all that was over, that Ida Tarbell came in. She usually dines at
the Griffou. I dropped over to her table and had a bully half hour
talk with her. -- though I was afraid that I did most of the talking.
She's sure a wonder -- such a brain and such beauty would have made her
ring down the annals of France in other times. As France, lady,
would have made you immortal.

Today, I dropped into McClure's. I left it to go to luncheon with
Rose, persuaded that there is no doing anything with that place. It will
have to go its own gait to Hell. Everything is at cross-purposes,
everything is jangling, everything is sordid and morally dirty as ever.
He has just mistreated Sedgwick so that Sedgwick is going his way; and
there goes another! He is in the West now, posing as the great editor
and telling people that my mind never got over the shock of the San
Francisco earthquake. Poor Mackenzie is standing to the guns through
many troubles. Rose, whom I took to luncheon, feels that her time of
service is about over. I think that Collier's and the American will
be dividing her before the year is out. Miss Gather's grip is stronger
than ever. It will be all her and S. S. Its own gait to hell!
Just before he went West, S. S. bent over little Miss Carroll, the

Thursday.

You have been thinking all this day that I am a nasty, dis-
gusting, brute. I went into the club this morning, to wait for Rufus.
The man at the desk said to me, "Mr. Irwin, here is a letter which came
for you yesterday morning, and got mixed with the packages." It was
your letter announcing that June Jeopardy had been accepted. And this
morning you received a letter from me saying not a word thereof!

I'm as jubilant and happy to think that you are really coming out
between book covers as you can possibly be. it is news so good, O
friend, that I have been strangely lighthearted all day. Oh, there's
nothing like the feeling when you hold onto a book that you made yourself
-- I say it who have been only in collaborations. I speak for the
first interview with the new and prominent authoress, the whosewhoser,
the outburst of Brazil. I can see it now. As thus:

PRETTY LITTLE
WRETTER

AUTHORESS HERE.

BROWN-EYED BRAZILIAN SYLPH

WRITER'S NOTE: MENTION XXX XXX XXX XXX

WROTE "JUNE
JEOPARDY."
)))))

GOTTERSPREAD DIRECT.

Anyway, omitting the head, I shall seek you out in your pretty
and tasteful apartment in the aristocratic suburb of Br ookline. your
surroundings will radiate femininity. You will receive me graciously.
There will be nothing for the bluestocking in your appearance. A par of
melting, liquid, brown eyes, a mass of soft and wavy brown hair that
holds a suggestion of the passionate midnight tints of warmer climes,
A beautiful figure. she seemed formed indeed to interpret
femininity and romance. I will ask you what you assign as the cause
of your present success. you will say that it is hard work. You
have nothing above the other girls of your set, but application and a
desire for success. Looking int o your brown eyes, which make one
forget the authoress in the woman, I shall ask you if you don't belive
that it was rather born in you and that the work brought it out.
A pretty flush will mantle your dark skin. That will cause me to ask
you how it happens that you, a daughter of New England, have that tropic
compulsion. "I am hardly a daughter of New England," you will reply,
"Although my ancestors fought in the Revolution; but I was born in
Brazil -- ah, fair Brazil!" And, after finding what you think of the
other Best Sellers, I will go away, forming my snapper upon the words
which still seemed to quiver on the lips of the pretty authoress; and
pondering upon it, I will decide that this, then, is the elusive quality
which has so charmed the public -- the intellect of New England and
the warmth of Brazil.

Won't it frazzle you? I am sorry that my typewriter acted so badly
on the head. The truth is that it was apalled by the magnitude of the
task.

And I'm really glad that it is Huebsch. I believe that he will
bring himself on that book as a big firm, with twenty books a month,