January 9, 1941.

9121 Alto Cedro Drive,
Beverly Hills, Cal.

My dear Muriel:

I am sad never to have heard from you
in all these months since I left. I see your
photograph in illustrated magazines -- but never
a word from you. Perhaps you never got my long
letter from Taos when I first arrived there.
This is my new address.

Or, I have just heard of letters sent
to me at Taos, by other friends, which never reached
me. Either the local Spanish postman dropped
them in the alfalfa field on the way, or Mabel's
spy-system sneaks them. So a letter from you to
me may be among her souvenirs -- ready to appear
in her next book of memoirs, where I will eventu-
ally get a chance of reading it.

Or, maybe you are just angry with me
and didn't write; though, if you are, it will be
for something I haven't done -- for I am a very
loving friend of yours -- very sincerely fond
of you.

Or, perhaps -- which is the most likely
of all -- you were simply lazy about writing.

But the chance that a letter from you
really did get lost in the Taos mail is not so
far-fetched, since a very long letter from Paul
Stephenson (which I am sure he wrote me) never
reached me.

Or, maybe you thought my poetry, in
the book I gave you, was feeble and over-
romantic -- and this made you lose your interest
in me. How many suspicions occur to one's

-2-

imagination when one doesn't hear from somebody!

But send me a postcard, do, because I
have got to have an operation next week -- and
would love to hear from you. You know I have had
ulcerated intestines for some time: and in New
York I seemed to be almost all right at last; and
in Taos I thought, until October, that I was com-
pletely cured. Then, for no apparent reason, a
violent relapse! My internal hemorrhages became
so severe in the last two months, that they must
operate now to stop them. I daren't delay it
much longer, as there is always danger of infec-
tion in the part that bleeds if I don't have that
cut away. They say I am lucky that it has been
bleeding because that has kept it clean from in-
fection; and it might have been very serious,
suddenly, if infection had set in. But apart
from that I have been terribly weakened by these
hemorrhages; so that there were days when I
couldn't even think straight, and only wanted to
lie down. As soon as I got up I wanted to go to
bed again and sleep -- and this in spite of the
fact of a tremendous amount of work always piling
up. I wanted to work and yet I always wanted to
sleep -- from physical exhaustion -- and the ner-
vous conflict which this produced made matters
even worse. I was given some temporary treatment
but this seemed to be quite a shock; and for one
week I had quite a difficulty in walking, from
weakness in the legs.

I didn't bother anybody with all this
dismal health news before; because it was boring.
But now that I actually have got to go to hospi-
tal next Tuesday, the 14th, for the operation, I
am explaining about it in order to give you a
vague idea of what led up to the necessity for
agreeing to let a surgeon have a try, after all
dieting has failed.

I have rented a house from a woman (a nice woman) called Peggy Rodakiewicz for the winter; so please write me a line here, and it will be sent on to the hospital if I am still in hospital before it reaches California.

Note, Muriel dear: 9121 Alto Cedro
Drive will be my address on and off till April.

319 West 18th Street
New York City.

March 31st 1928

Dear Moolie:

Little did I think when I agreed that windows were
designed for jam-pots, that I was saving a future autobiog-
raphist (dear God what a word!) to humanity - or to what
passes for such. I must be getting middle-aged, for I regret
the era of the jam-pots. But - I thought James was good, but
I think Douglas is better. You are in a thoroughly nasty
magazine in which all the alleged editors are swine, but I
am paying thirty-five-cents (35 cents) for every issue you
are in. I once urged you to write just this sort of thing,
but the day was not yet, evidently. Won't you come and see
us? We have a kitty, two Corona typewriters, and home made
gin. Also, you would like Catherine.

P.S. - I think your works are swell.

With much love always,

N.B. Where and how is Nat?