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New York City, August 13th, 1915.

Mme. E. Azalia Hackley,
#3530 Forest Avenue,
Chicago, Ill.

My dear Mme. Hackley:

I have just this week had the opportunity of going over your manuscript, "The Colored Girl Beautiful". Work which has for two months taken every minute of my time prevented me from doing so before. And I don't mind telling you what the work was: I have made the English Version for a new opera which is to be performed for the first time in America at the Metropolitan Opera House this season.

Now as to your book, I am very much impressed with it. I have made one or two suggestions for changes in the text, but I feel that your style and manner of treatment should stand substantially unchanged. However, I shall go over the book again more carefully and critically and suggest whatever I think might be an improvement.

Do you wish me to try and find a publisher here, or do you prefer to publish in Chicago? I think a New York publisher would be preferable. Yet you might make an advantageous arrangement to publish privately in Chicago. There is still another plan worth your consideration, the publication of the book by The Crisis; through the medium of the magazine the work would at once be brought to the attention of 150,000 of just the sort of readers you wish to reach.

Before submitting to a publisher the manuscript should be put in clean typewritten form. After my second reading, I can send the manuscript on to you and you can have the new copy made in Chicago, or I can have the work done here in duplicate and send one copy on to you for final revision before submitting. This latter plan might be best if you wish me to try to place the book here.

With kindest regards, in which my wife joins me, I am,

Sincerely yours,

#2311 Seventh Avenue,
New York City.

New York City, August 27, 1915.

Mme. E. Azalia Hackley,
Phyllis Wheatley Home,
Chicago, Ill.

Dear Mme. Hackley:-

I found your letter and the enclosed manuscript here on
my return from Boston. I shall take the first opportunity
to go over the whole book carefully. I shall then go on
the trail for a publisher, and to find a proper publisher is,
perhaps, the most difficult job connected with authorship.
In looking for a publisher, we must keep in mind that the book
will appeal almost exclusively to colored readers.

I am sorry that you are meeting with so many discourage-
ments in Chicago; anyhow, you ought to be in New York; this
is the artistic center of the continent. My brother has said
to me several times how much he wished that you were associated
with him here in the music settlement work.

Oh, whatever you do, don't study rhetoric at the North-
western or any other school. You have a good, natural style;
you need only to continue your reading of good authors for
method and vocabulary and to keep on writing. One learns to
write only by writing.

I shall be glad to do a paragraph or two of foreword for
the book. As soon as I shall make any further progress I
shall let you hear from me.

Very sincerely yours,

\#2311 Seventh Avenue,
New York City.