'Luk at the bye,' says Denny, 'He'll git it!' And then down went the drunk
in the road. 'My God,' says Denny, 'It's an awful thing for artillery
to leave its guns.' And with that he rose up -- and ping! plunk! I
can hear the way they soshed now -- one through the head as he rose and
one through the buttocks, so that he was not behind and before.

"He never knew what hit him. The next moment they got that drunken
son of a gun, but I didn't mind him. Somebody reached out and dragged
Denny's body back. Twelve years in the Royal Horse Artillery -- ten
years in the American army -- knew more about artillery than any officer
in the American army -- and this was his last campaign. I used to sit
up nights with him and ask him what he was going to do when he had got
through his soldiering. 'Oh, I'll make the fine coachman for somebody,'
he said. That was all he thought of in the way of ambition -- and him
able to give pointers to any officer in the American artillery. "

(Selection from the half soshed remarks of Carl Miner, formerly
second sergeant in the Astor Battery and now assistant district attorney
of the city and County of New York and the right hand of William Traver
Jerome)

And the time and place of works like these make little difference.

I have also another repartee to add to your collection. There is an
actor whose name I disremember who is noted for a certain flossiness in
his manner of approaching the lowly and charming sex among whose brighter
ornaments and most sanctified lights is Santa Ynez. One morning
on a one-night stand, the waitress came in with the usual formula --

"Beefsteak, ham and eggs, mutton chops, bacon and eggs, fish!"

"Have you any wild fish?" asked the actor.

"Naw, but we can ketch a tame fish and tease it for you," res-
ponded the ready waitress.

By the way; lest you think I haven't made good on the things I promised to send you, I indite these few hesitating lines.

In the first place; that tale of mine about the lady of Spain is away down somewhere among my belongings and two searches in this most crowded of weeks has failed to turn it up. In the second place everyone here is fighting for the copies of the Mary Stewart Cutting novel. I'll separate it from them as soon as may be. In the third place, The Beloved Vagabond is lent, or so I found it when I returned, and I shall have to wait to send it to you. I have seen "The Road to Yesterday." It is a good idea somewhat mechanically worked out, and the whole thing strikes one rather as a lost opportunity than as anything else. It is a theme for poetry in line and situation; and the authors couldn't give it that. I kept thinking what Rostand would have done!

Saturday;

It is a long time between writes; I know that you will be saying
this and I hasten to explain that it has been a Hades of a week; also
that I am taking a leaf from the note book of G. Burgess and putting a
special delivery stamp on this. The Book Lady came out -- but how
danged! That mutt of an editor shall be anathema to me. For you rem-
ember, perhaps, that it contained no direct reference to San Francisco
while it was loaded with indirect references. I spoke of the golden brown
bay, and "Here in the West" and made such references all through. Well,
the mutt who misdirects the destinies of Ainslee's rewrote my first
paragraph in his own somewhat daffy style, and stated officially that this
occurred in the down town district of New York -- and not a single word
of the rest was changed, so that residents of New York say "Here in the
West." God gave it the luck to be in Ainslee's where few will see it.

I have just seen an advance copy of Everybody's, where Professor
Malino is played up as the leading fiction feature of the month. The
illustrations please the author thereof, and therein I am satisfied. I
am sending you an Ainslee's, so that you may weep with me over the
butchery.

I have just lunched with Hamlin Garland. Earlier in the day, I sent
back one of his tales to him with the usual apologetic note. His
humor was not pleasant; and he gave me a long thesis to prove that the
modern American magazine is falling from its high estate to mere journ-
alism. Garland is a handsome man with a head lithe yet massive and a
nose straight as a gun stock, together with fine, deep set eyes. He
has a pointed beard which is just beginning to grow grizzly. He seems
to be a little world weary and has something of that cynicism about the
world and its people which I find is likely to come to the man who has
made a young success which he falls falling away in his age. When he
got through his grievances, he stopped to tell me about the best tale
of the San Francisco earthquake. His wife has a beautiful woman friend
who was staying at the Saint Francis Hotel. She was going to a noon
luncheon away out in one of the suburbs. Through a combination of
circumstances which, Garland says, would not do to tell, she did

know that morning that there was going to be an earthquake(had been
I mean. The break is so good that I leave it ) and so she rose betimes,
dressed in a white cloth suit, a white hat with a long plume, white gloves
and a bunch of violets. Sallying forth from her room at eight o'clock,
she found that the elevator was not running. She was impatient so she
walked down stairs. She stood at the head of the marble stairase, and
saw a sight that was a sight. There in the doorway of the hotel was
huddled a mass of people in pajamas, nighties, dirty raincoats, and
every degree of dishabille, and two sentries were patrolling the lobby.
Someone in the crowd at the door said, "My God, look at that!" and po inted
to her. And that crowd of scared, dirty refugees looked up and beheld that
vision in spotless white. The further joke of it is that the fire
came along a little after and that she spent the next four days being
driven from camp to camp and begging in bread lines -- in those clothes.

I am going to send you this afternoon the mutilated Ainslee's, and
also, if I can get it, the advance Everybody's. On second and rapid con-
sideration, I don't think I'll do that. Those file copies are exchanged
in advance in the greatest confidence, and it would be a great breach of
that confidence to hand one of them out.

But the drawings certainly illustrate.

There's a literary romance going on in Hatfield House. There's a
Miss Allen in the place who writes pieces for the papers. She does
considerable for Munsey's and considerable more for the newspaper syn-
dicates -- conventional tales about girls in studios or apartment
houses. She has a kind of plump prettiness whose only drawback is one
of the snubbiest noses I ever saw and whose greatest charm and addition
is a most sulphitic pair of dimples. They are uneven, and the right
dimple is the deeper and more kissable. She has a turn toward Christian
Science and several other isms, including vegetarianism, and a way of
thrusting them upon you. Also, she is a laughing optimist. And she
sells most of her manuscripts to Munsey's. And Munsey's has a young man
named Merwin who works in their editorial rooms. Days, Nights, he
plays in Miss Allen's apartments. He's getting close to a touchdown I
take it, and Hatfield House is looking forward to the announcement of the
engagement.

Monday Jan 21, 1907.

I had my hardest long distance mix-up with S. S. McClure today, and
have over ruled him in a foolishness. I tremble in my shoes at my
temerity. But it is done, and I now proceed with the air of a man
who has cast the die to a consideration of the Larger Editorial Policy
and to the editing of the story of Montana. And that same is a job!
About my troubles with the Chief, I gag at particulars. I am growing so
tired of these diplomatic rows.

I had a straight show down with Mrs. McClure this morning, a beaut-
ifully humorous meeting rightly considered, and this evening the Irwin
family goes to her house to dine and to learn how she takes it!

Eventually, W. H. Irwin will burst from his cell here with a Hell of
a yell.

She wants the divorce question taken up from the standpoint of ex-
act and primitive Christianity (she is not a Presbyterian I find but a
member of some sulphitic sect which believes that only its own insiders
will be saved) and wants to know why there is no more of a Christian
tone in the magazine. But I stand for all that, since I am getting her,
with the help of the coming son-in-law, on our side in some of the most
momentous questions which confront this here sheet. So much for the
office.

I have finished The Spoils of Poynton. I'm all admiration for it
in the main, but I do find that a great deal of it is beyond me. The
motives and character of Freda have huge hiati in my understanding. I
wish that I had time to read everything that Henry James has done
chronologically, in order to find just the point where he got away from
me. There are The Portrait of a Lady and Roderick Hudson, where I get

a bead and hit a bull's eye. When it comes to The Spails of Poynton
I am a little at sea although understanding here and there; by the time you
you come to The Awkward Age and The Wings of a Dave, I am mainly at sea.
By the time I got through, I might understand this subtlety business.
Mrs. Gereth is plain all the way thorough. Freda carries all the puzzlements
One of the stunts which I most admired was the way in which he suggests
Mona and makes you feel her with almost no description.

I have mailed you Ainslee's and Everybody's, though I suppose that
you have seen them already. There is a good joke in the drawings of
Taylor. For when Professor Malino, Bill and Mamiemeet on the sands,
he has her in a black bathing suit, and ten minutes later when they were
clinching bread hooks under the umbrella, they have her in a red suit
which is a scandalous time and place to make such a change.

Also, I have to report that my son and the rightful heir to the
acquired and accumulated millions of the house of Irwin has got himslef
welded so tight to his darkey nurse that he was pried from her with great
difficulty on hernight off. We haven't moved yet, and I curse the
house where fate and my incompetence as a searcher for quarters has
placed us.

But things will always have to go on a little time as they are.

170

Thursday Jan 24, 1907.

I have dug up at last the bunch of what Voltaire called in his letters to Emperor Frederick "dirty linen." Here it is for you to wash. It is a bad tale I know, but somewhere in it may be the story that I am bating about for. I scratched a little a few nights ago on the story of the conversion and the railroad wreck.

I have much more courage now in tackling tales since I have really and truly seen myself in print -- even though those two tales are so much not mine at all! At least, plotless though I be, I can drive at the thing as I once drove at newspaper work.

I wish that you might have sat in at the little luncheon talk which I had yesterday with three of my trade. There were George Horace Lorimer just up from Philadelphia, Sears of Appleton's, a somewhat superior mannered man a little given to patronage but a person of a great sense of humor, and Hamlin Garland. Lorimer is a daisy.

He has an open, boyish face, that reminds you a little of Ernest Piexotto's, although it is a stronger one, a pair of the brightest eyes in the world, and a rugged, humorous mouth. He has a characteristically boyish way of throwing back his head when he laughs, and he is as amusing when he talks as when he writes. Garland has a pretty wit of his own. We fell together at luncheon, and somehow we began to knock. Every contemporary, every author, and then each other -- it was one round of laughter. We broke up simultaneously at two o'clock, because no man dared to go first on account of what the others would say.

As always happens in these man talks, I carried away not a thing in my memory -- not a sparkle to give to you. Such wit proceedeth from the situation of the moment, and the mind is so sharpened that memory is not working, I suppose. But I have heard a great piece of repartee on this week of the Gods. Scott is the president of the Century Company. His son

may be described as his office assistant. The other day young Scott was introduced as "general manager of the Century Company, editor of the Century and son of Mr. Scott president of the company." "I almost believe the last clause of your statement," said Scott.

And the game pegs along, and lo I am an editor, and S. S. sits in Europe meditating much trouble, and on Feb 8, (dread day) he will return laden with the spoils of the London office. Then will life get humpy again. I can stand him as long as I keep my resistance to him, but just the moment(as happened before he left) that I begin to let things go and let him have his toys, on that moment I find him wearing me out.

There is nothing in the world like standing up to trouble and fighting the other fellow back!

Tuesday Jan 29, 1907

To give you a really adequate account of this last few days,
I must needs have a pen more strung to complications than I have
ever wielded in this magazine game or in the more beloved ( as a poet
is more beloved than a philosopher) newspaper business. For it is a
thing of complications. It is made up of many little simples;
and the unimportant thing today, the little thread in the fabric of my
day's work, becomes a main cord and a vastly important thing tomorrow.

It now occurs to me why some men I know have trouble telling the
adventures of the day to the wives of their bosoms. For I have heard
more than one woman complain that her husband does not tell her what has
been doing at the office on that day; that the details of her husband's
business is a closed book to her. If this is so, it is because of this
very fact; that modern business is a mosaic, composed of infinite com-
plications, modified by many things. One can almost as soon live it
over again as retell it; and so when I sit down to this hard type and
start to tell you of my nights and days I run against an infinitely
embarrassing mass of detail which I must unravel before you may get the
slightest thread. I see now how simple those newspaper days were, wherein
each one I might round out with a message and its own special history!

In very truth your true-made reporter must be the greatest object-
ive letter writer in the world; and if there was anything especial in
this letters of mine, blame it not upon the hand that writ it but upon
the circumstances under which it was written. Not only is his every day
separate from his every other day; but also he Lives a life without any
of these puzzling, long drawn out complications, whereof the telling
is a matter of the genius of history -- he xxx who can take out of the
tangled web the straight thread of truth. There is psychology now;

but bedded in a matrix of hard and stubborn grain, so that there is not
the energy left, when my day is done, to crack it. And so I find that
in these times (having little capacity for looking within and finding
adventure in my own soul) I must make up these letters of little flashes
of personality that come to me out of my nights and days. Even there
I find less to tell about than in the old days; for I find that
the men of this artificial and steam-heated world wherein I live are
infinitely less interesting than newspaper people.

I've troubled my breast and beaten my head to know the reason there-
of; and this has occurred to me: the half success, the near-success,
the failure who just grazed being a success, is usually, I find, a great
deal more attractive than the real success (this isn't a reason either;
it is just a kind of a contributory cause) There are William and

Henry James for example; every one says that they are hardly worth the
knowing except as one would go to a dime museum to see the latest cel-
ebrity; but their drunken and worthless brother Robertson is a wonder in
personality, best of all kinds to face you across a table. The success
must kill a lot of his personality, must stifle a great deal of the
generous and gracious impulse which makes him give himself forth to
people. That all takes energy, and he needs all that energy to put
into his success. And I've always pointed out to you that the newspaper
business is the profession of failures.

For mine, I'd like to lose every bit of that sparkle of person-
ality, were it not for you and some other friends to whom it may mean
something; but it the main I'd trade it all for a half an ounce of
steady brains (it seems to me that I have said this before) Strange
isn't it that while the thing which sets great art off from little art

is that very point of personality, yet the expression of personality is

so fatal to the artist? Wouldst thou write, O Lady Inez, then cease
to sparkle -- though I won't quite say that, knowing of some who can
both write and sparkle. At least, cease throwing your sparkle out to
every dog that passes on the streets.

For dogs that bite, I find, aren't half so dangerous as dogs that
fawn and lick the hand. Since you may kick away the dog that bites,
but the conscience in you makes you stop to pat the dog that fawns, and
if there are too many dogs so there are too many pats, and every pat
takes up 1-1000 of a horse power. And the man of success makes pig-iron
out of those horse powers (All of which I don't really believe, but it is
nice to follow out trains of thought in this fashion; some day I'm going
along this way until I find out what Mrs. McClure really thinks)

I dropped in on Frank for a few minutes on Sunday morning. He has fallen at last! He has ceased to be a sulphite. He wants to write a play. Moreover, he would like to have me collaborate with him on it, and I have this method of making a fortune under advisement. And now sleep lays his fingers and all that, and Hallie yawn s, and I close this extremely dotty and irresponsible letter which seems to me about as fool a thing as highbrow ever set his hand to, and get me to bed so that I may rise another day to labor for S. S. McClure. He is speeding from Europe, so mad at me, I understand, that he can hardly contain himself. O that he fires me, really fires me!

Dear Inez;

Just a line to tell you as perpromise how I came out with the
ladies. They had been, sensibly, to the ticket window, copped out
their tickets from the three reserved for Mr. Irwin, and had gone on
the train, leaving word for me -- and there I found them. Miss Cather
had been through merry adventures -- but of those more later. And
I found the work of three days stacked up, and have certainly buckled
down on this day.

I think now that we have Mary Baker G. Eddy on the run complete.

In haste,

Will.

Friday mornin.

I have just been mixed in a frightful blunder, for which I am mainly the responsible party, and from which I hereby mean to draw a few Moral Lessons. In a life of carelessness, this is the supreme break. It is a tale of a hopelessly lost manuscript, and to my mind rises the experiences of Mr. Hedda Gabler, Sir Izaac Newton, and a few others.

The Story of Montana, as you may know, is only half printed. It was up to me to do over the second half. We had two manuscripts, the first on the original of the author, the other a revision. On that revision, I had done about a fortnight's work on odd times; and I had both manuscripts at home. Two nights ago, I went home to get action. It was not there. It was not anywhere. I put the maid, a grouchy Irish girl who has had a fight with Hallie, to the test.

"Was it blue stuff that luks like printin'?" she asked. It was.

"Sure I didn't think that was any good. It was on the waste basket and I threw it out." Greta passionate confusion, and a rush for the janitor, a gentleman of color. He had burned it, as he always burns all the papers. There was no manner of doubt about it. A wild rush for the office. No duplicates. Miss Cather, who is in Boston, on the long distance telephone. They were the only two copies in existence. A rush for a telegraph blank to get Connolly, the original author, in Montana, to find if he had kept his notes. NEDXAXMHKEX. Couldn't be found in all Montana. Whereabouts unlocated. Haven't been able to find him yet, and my fate hangs in the balance. If he has any notes, even then I shall probably have to jump straight out to Montana as soon as I can, and fix it up on jig time. And since I made the break, I shall have to do it out of my own pocket, a process, what with salary and expenses, that will make a thousand dollars look sick. As a matter of fact, this may be the cause of my resignation from the firm of McClure's, since two office boys have been fired in my time for losing manuscripts, and I don't see where I should draw the line.

And here comes the moral lesson. Privately, I am all broken up, not with apprehension (since I can remake the money and to leave McClure's

would undoubtedly be the very best thing for me) but just because I am the eternal mutt who has done this thing. It is the kind of thing that makes you draw up your hands, when you are alone, as do they who struggle with the noose, and to be borne only with the eternal help of booze. But I have been the courage bearer for this office ever since I came into it, the one who has assumed the brave front and laughed off all the troubles whenever it looked to the whole push as though things were going to the dogs. A cheerful optimism has been my public play. I have laughed down all our troubles with Christian Science and the lie like and told the rest to join the don't worry club. Just such a front, I think, have put on the loss of this manuscript and during my terms at the office I have found myself as cheerful and serene of mind as ever. I dread to go home, for I have the feeling like the little boy who has been promised a thrashing as soon as he gets back from school; but in the office it seems as though nothing had happened to me. And the morals I draw from this are first the value of a cheerful front, of the mere involuntary reaction of smiling, and secondly the power of not being afraid.

Also, the saddest words of tongue and pen are not quite "it might have been" but "If I only had!"

Ellen Terry, being here and under engagement to do her members for this shop, was approached of Miss Tracy, a large and societified girl around here whom I use sometimes to do our diplomacies. Miss Tracy won't to luncheon yesterday in the little flat where the Terry is staying with friends, and she came home a ganglion of enthusiasms.

"Oh, the blithest, gayest, funniest, Kindliest human being I ever saw! Just sixteen! She insisted on waiting on table and sang pirate tunes to us while she cleared things away. She's fallen in love with American ice cream, an' they have it for her ate every meal, even breakfast!" Later, I may go to luncheon with Ellen and have more to tell you of this eternal child -- "And Elizabethan in the Nineteenth Century," McClure, with his genius for the glittering phrase, has named her.

Hallie luncheoned with Daisy yesterday, in time to hear the news that Mrs. Nellis has hooked her English importer, and there is to me a wedding -- Mrs Nellis being his number Four. Hallie is probably going abroad in the early summer, to stay until fall, and perhaps, if she likes the Parisian art schools, through the winter. And of course she's wild with enthusiasms, and even the Weir to the Irwin Millions is learning to talk about London. Every fair and likeable child has his little language, beloved of his mother, I suppose, and Billy has a most attractive trick of piping "yes" or "No" to every indirect question which he cannot answer. Ambulances, whose use and cause he learned a few days ago, now occupy his imagination to the exclusion of nearly everything else. "Fire wagons for sick people," he calls them, and he plays ambulance -- first the motive power, then the passengers, and then the captain and crew -- all day long.

And now to work to see if I can find that man Connoly of Montana.

Montana -- hated name!

Sunday afternoon.

A new whirl in the McClure business may bring me to Boston just for a day next week -- about Wednesday I think. S. S. is coming on Friday. In the meantime, there has been discovered a plot among his brother Tom to get the business out of everyone's hands and into that of the family, including the firing of Willie here and the instant discharge of everyone whom Tom doesn't like. It is a kind of a pale revolution. The only true frustrator of these plits is Bennett, who lives in Boston as you know, and who has been sick in bed for a week. So I've got to get up to see him before Friday, to learn how he wants the thing handled when S. S. gets back.

I saw Ellen Terry act yesterday in Captain Brassbound's version -- the best Shaw play I have seen, for my tastes. There was something pathetic about it -- for Ellen is all in. Her voice is old and cracked; it breaks. Makeup couldn't conceal the wrinkles and ridges. Most pathetic off all, her memory is going. Twenty times she felted on her lines, stopped until she could gather her mind, waiting calmly until she got it, and went on. I take it that it was rather a bad day for her in that respect, for the whole company seemed nervous and the leading man spoiled the climax of the first act by getting his lines wrong. The whole thing gave singularly the impression of an amateur performance where they knew their lines only imperfectly.

She was only going through the motions -- there was no fire in it -- only instinctive art. Yet from this shell of an impersonation I could gather what a personality it must have been once -- what fire and charm.

I agree perfectly with everything you say about Dona Dolores and Don Pancho. I am delighted that you think that there is something in the old thing. It is a tale that I had discarded in the period of discouragement, and happened to glance over in the process of throwing away some old papers. It seemed to me that there might be something in it, and am glad to have my view confirmed. I'll go at it on the lines you suggest as soon as ever I come back. By the way, I refer only here to the thing with which I led off my last note. There is a good chance that the Story of Montana may be patched together after all. I finally caught that man on the wire and he said that he was sending along the manuscript. That is ambiguous, but I take it that he would have put up a holler audible from here to Kansas if he thought the thing couldn't be put together. That half quells one of my worries.

There are enough more, Heaven knows. That palace revolution had assumed formidable proportions before chance revealed it to the Prime Minister. The Grand Duke Thomas seemed to have been running it all alone, trusting to his other brothers to come in. He had found that the weak spot in the Kingdom was the Queen, whose ascetic temperament was lighted by no human warmth, but whose character presented the singular anomaly of extreme vascillation. Every day for a fortnight he had visited the Queen in the retirement which she was keeping

since the withdrawal of His Majesty to England, bringing her statements falsified by himself concerning the finances of the realm, by which he sought to persuade her that the exchequer was in a dangerous condition. By delicate insinuation, he sought to persuade her that the Prime Minister was responsible.

The pot was discovered in a singular manner. At that time, the Crown Prince of Scotland, Cameron if the proud family of Mackenzie, was betrothed to the Crown Princess.

One afternoon, leaving a highbrow hunt in which the court was engaged,

he posted to pay the princess one of these clandestine visits which made their courtship so romantic. I n passing across the apartments of the Queen, he perceived her in close conference with the Grand Duke Thomas, who had also deserted the hunt. Some thing in his manner attracted the attention and aroused the suspicion of the young prince. This suspicion was heightened by the actions of the Grand Duke, who changed color and immediately withdrew. Posting by subway express to the Government Houses, the young price informed the Prime Minister, with whom he had already formed a strong alliance. The Prime Minister instantly decided on his course. Forcing his way into the Royal apartments, he forced, by sheer personality, a confession of the whole plot from the Queen, together with the time set for its consummation -- the return of the Royal Barge from the British visit.

The Prime Minister found himself confronted with a most unusual situation --- etc.

Which leads up to this remark. In all my life, so far as I can remember, I have never seen a man acting the whole part of the villain in melodram before. Spite, jealousy, anger, chating for advantage, I have known, but never before absolute, melodramatic villainy, and I ponder it deeply. Any child could foil that plot, I think, but one is never sure whether S. S. McClure will follow good counsels or bad ones. When I see you I'll tell you great teales of my interview with the Reigning Qu een.

Thursday afternoon.

I am pretty sure that my days on McClure's are numbered. Two women have sold me out. Miss Cather has gone completely back oh me and has been playing a double game to get rid of me and get the place. I have suspected that for some time, though I would never admit to myself my suspicion. But she is a little square headed and has failed to cover up her tracks in some respects, so that I have it in cold black and white. That, with the treacheries of Mrs. McClure, has dished me complete. The Cheif has gone out to Chicago, and Miss Roseboro, who has talked over the whole field with me, advises my immediate resignation to avoid the McClure method of getting rid of a man, which is to discredit him so that there may be no come back. The method which he has attempted to take in my case is to send me out West on a series of utterly imposible articles, and when I fall down on them to cast me out discredited. Sometimes things shift here very swiftly, but with the woman whom I have been associated with, utterly false to me, and intriguing to get the place away from me, and with her utter and complete influence over the Boss as a lever, I can't see where I come off except with a quick and honorable resignation.

In thus laying down the oars and transferring myself to another boat, I surprise myself by noticing how little I care. The thing most hurt is my pride, of course. It hurts a man fearfully to be beaten on any proposition. It seems better to the Anglo Saxon pluck and bottom to you to die at the board, to pull your heart out, and to die at the post.

But I have the rest of a life to live after all, and it is better I suppose to withdraw from the field with honor than to lay xxx fight out a losing game when the game is, after all, none of your own.

The fight is not

wholly lost yet, either. But if I should stay here, what happiness could
I have in it, knowing that the person who had treated me so was working at
the next desk? Mackenzie is imploring me to stay on the grounds that
if I go the concern will smash. But it has muddled through somehow
in spite of everything, and I think that there is some luck in the star
of the lying McClure which will keep him, the insane, the immoral,
the damned, on the winning course.

And there is a certain relief in all this, I'm like one glad to
die. For a long nine months I have struggled with intrigues, fought
with wreckers, done the best I knew how to pull this thing out of the
hole. I have carried not only the troubles of a very sick business but
also the personal troubles of a very sick family. I'm pretty well worn
out now -- it has been worse than six years of real work -- and the
thing most in my mind is that I can work again and have a little rest out
of it all. The thing that hurts me most is the defection of Miss Cather
and the general nastiness of the way by which she is going to climb.
It renews a feeling that I have often had in these months when I have
seen something of the successful in our profession; about nine out of ten
of them climb by some path which you and I would scorn. It makes you
sceptical of worldly success. It makes you think that those who have
succeeded are those who are willing to take any method to succeed; that
this is the price of success.

And, as I have said, I am not all sure that I will be leaving here
right away. But, I repeat, I can never seen to take any more heart in
it with Miss Cather in the same place.

My plans are a bit uncertain. It is probable that I shall go back
to the Sun temporarily after I leave here; but with an idea of staying
but only to have something to feed the family while I look about for the
place that is open. There is only one good thing about it; the man who leaves

McClure's now will be cheered and believed in by the whole publishing
world, following the other break. The defection will be laid not to
him, but to the Chief.

So you see that the thing isn't very blackafter all, that it has its
compensations, and that the is nothing to bother about except the
danger that I may have to stay after all. Were you singularly right
about McClure's: It is a thing which, following the example of its
chief and namesman, has no health and no truth in it!

Don't think I'm broken up - I'm going to
the theatre tonight, which is proof enough - I
couldn't stand a real grief and a musical
comedy both in the same 24 hours.

Saturday;

He has came. The office has been in a turmiol all the morning.
The office boys have been histling baggage and empty milk cans;
the place has been filled with scattering McClure relations; the Grand
Dunkes have met, and are now plotting the earliest possible moment to
get at him. I have been up since day break rustling people together so
that the scattered McClure clans might meet himat the steamer. When
it arrived, beheld him on the fore peak waving at us, and the rest of
the passengers forbearing to wave at their own friends for the joy of
watchung him. Then behold him coming down the gang plank carying the
baggage of one of the prettiest women I have seen for a long time, while
four or five men pas sengers struggled with his baggage. Then behold him,
amid the volleys of osculation inseperable in my mind from the arrival of
a steamer, holding a reception and bidding farewell to twenty new found
friends. Behold the McClure procession forming and trying to follow him
in his scattering and erratic movements while he got his baggage through
the customs. He has sneaked off to luncheon now with Mrs. McClure and
MissCather, leaving me out for reasons connected with the ten minute
interview he had early in the game with the Gra dnd Dukes -- I fancy
that I got it hard. This is to be a palace revolution or the downfall
of somebody!

Certes things are doing when the Chief comes back to his ain!

He has broken the news of thre or four gold bricks, chief of these
being a serial from Tarkington ordered in advance.

And Mr. George Madden Martin has been in on us, leaving a good taste
of Southern courtesy. And I have been fighting night and day to get
Miss Cather's April Eddy article through. And Mollie Best has had her
nerves go back on her and has retired to Jersey from which she tele-
phones four times a day asking me to attend to her private affairs.

And the April magazine had gone late and will go later after S. S. tears it all too pieces and puts it together just the way it was before. A nd I've been hopping about to get every scrap of mss. out of the office ahead of the visit of the Chief, knowing well that he'd pounce upon it and accept the bummest of it all. And the Grand Dukes have been meeting and dividing the spoils of the office between them. And life is certainly merry, -- merry and fast. But wait until Monady -- on the first Monday after he gets back, he always blows out a cylinder head.

Rufus said that he was going to get every bit of the evidence in the Thaw case. That being so, I suppose that you read the testimony of E velly Isn't it stunning?

Tuesday;

Today, being a holiday, is a wonderful time to get in licks of quiet
work w-cork. I need that same peace and quietness, for the story of Montana,
in its original form the queerest, craziest hodge podge I ever saw, has
to be rewritten, and that loss of the mss has of course held it back.
So, barring a luncheon with Dick Hotaling of San Francisco and a short
flying visit to the Dog Show at the Garden, I have been bent all day over
sheets of typewriting, trying to puzzle out meanings. Never have I
seen a worse mss. It is not obviously bad, for he writes the English
language, but it is queerly twisted and tangled as to the logic and
sometimes wholly incomprehensible. You are not allowed to change or
rewrite any of his language, and sometimes you must patch a paragraph
together by combining a sentence on page 17, another on page 3, and anoth-
er on page 12.

Your idea of the comparative merits of the Sun and World stories of
the Thaw case raises a strange question of my own judgement in my mind.
As a matter of fact, I had thought that Sam Adams has been having it all
put over him by the Sun. I had felt that he was sledging the adjectives
while the Sun was telling the straight, plain tale that is its glory to
tell. And you come along and quite reverse me. Is it partizanship, I
wonder, that makes me feel that way? I am always doubtful of my judge-
ment when partizanship enters into it. I don't think that I can give a
fair verdict on the work of a friend. And the Sun as an institution being
more my friend than Sam Adams as an individual, it is possible and likely
that this biasses my judgement. Another thing may enter into it; I
doubt not that it does. The Sun story, and the kind of thing that the
Sun does, -- glittering and rather unemotional statement of facts --
does not have to be touched up with high lights for the newspaper man. He
has been all through such scenes so many times that his imagination tells

him just how the thing goes -- how the counsel are acting, what show
of emotion the defendant is likely to give. That thing is not known to
the average reader, and perhaps he needs the emotionalism of the Sam Adams
stuff to point a way. But you will be interested to know that if I had
been given that assignment -- and it is the only big trial that I ever
yearned for -- I should have written it about as it is being written now
for the gun.

You may be interested to know, too, that the costume of Evelyn and
her whole appearance on the stand, is a part of the clever work of that
man Delmas, the best on the Pacific Coast in arranging stage settings.
In her war paint, as we used to see her a year ago, Evelyn's clothes rep-
resented about $80,000. The dress and modest violet hat which he has
picked out for her must cost about $25. He loses few tricks, that man.
Nearly every one says that he is "subtle". Oh, dear!

And you command me O queen to a task almost impossible and one
quite impossible now when you ask me about "should" and "would."
Never in my life could I get those two little wordz so that I was quite
sure of them. It is said that it is one of the last and lingering traces
of Scotch blood. I rather pride myself on having a delicate sense of
English meanings, but when my pride swells on that point I have only to
think of those two little words to grow humble again.

I simply haven't had time to give the close and prayerful study to
your long list of story suggestions that they certainly deserve.
There is, I doubt not, the making of a tale or two in them, whenever
I shall put my mind to them. The telling of a good jag tale is a little
beyond me now; that is a thing that takes the greatest skill. Not one
jag tale in ten shaves the coarse limit; most of them go over it. Some
day, I shall draw on my rich funds of experience and try hard.

To come back to Sam Adams for a minute, your talk on him strangely
confirms the judgement of the New York Sun. They have told me always the

that none of his short stories compare with his little newspaper tales
of the East Side. He, like Lindsay Denison and me, has the talent
in writing that is essentially journalistic -- that works most strong-
ly on the vivid impression of the moment -- that takes its strength and
its virility therefrom. Lindsay, as you know, has had his name to a few
short stories. He has told me that every one of them is the record of
something that he has seen in newspaper work -- simply the by-product,
like that which a certain Sun reporter once wrote to a certain
girl.

I had to pass up a chance to go to luncheon with Ellen Terry today
in order to keep my engagement with Hotaling. He is one of the men with
whom I never jibed on the Pacific Coast, but any man is welcome who comes
from the Broad acres; and here, away from the little causes of jealousy
which came between us there (he hated me because I was a friend of
Charlie Field -- jealousy) I find him, if not a friend, at least a good
companion, full of quips and jests. He is one of the character enigmas
of my life -- sane in places, horribly insane in others; full of a cynical
humor which causes him to do the most charmingly sulphitic things for
effect; vain enough to have remained an amateur actor all his days, yet
strengely modest; carrying the little spoiled child air of the
man who has always been richer than the people he surround him;
sound in business judgement, yet something of the artist too; and, for
his externals, possessed of a humorous pair of eyes and a wonderful mimic.
He loves dogs as much as I; and it was for the mutual admiration of a
man who loves them and knows points that I went to the show. It was
my annual visit to Dian's Papa -- Woodcote Wonder, the scarred old champion
who is hauled out now only for exhibition, he being past all competition
on points and age.

Once, it happened that during my grand development tour through

California, I found myself at the head of the Sonoma Valley. the valley of vines and blue hills, whose entrance is old Sonoma of the thousand legends and who sepinnacle is Mount St. Helena, the most eerily mysterious peak of the west. I have never been able to tell wherein resided that mystery of St. Helena; is it a moderate sized, cone-shaped peak, blue in the sun and magenta in the evening as all the lower mountains of California are; but there is some suggestion of the spirit about it that sets me always dreaming of faery. I had finished ascertaining the matchless resources of Sonoma ( there are fifty seven counties in California and fifty-six of them have matchless resources) and there was a day or so to spare. And I deliberately deserted the patrimony of duty. I chartered a coasting broncho of a most alluring pace, and for a day and a half I rode over the mountain into Lake County, that country of plateaux into which no railroad has ever come. Those days were fragrant with redwood and full of honey. It is all one sweet recollection of mountain roads where the giant chapparal met over your head, of baby skinned madrone bushes, of little valleys opening under your feet, of plateaux of flame heart poppies. But toward the evening of the first day, we loped out suddenly into sight of The Lake. And such a lake! I can't try to describe it. Our upland lakes of Colorado are slim virgins white robed for a sacrament; but this was a full-lipped woman with love in her misty eyes. Only away off across the mountain came down to a point in the lake, and I went away dreaming how I'd put up a bungalow there some day and have it to retire to. (I find on looking back that I have been turning loose my Western vocabulary and writing like Sunset Cox) But behold now the practical idealist. Dick Hotaling came through the hills as I did; and instead of keeping it for a paragraph in a letter to a friend he went and bought that point and is putting up

a house thereon to which he and Charlie Field are going to retire to
be old.

Hallie is going to and art student's ball tonight as the San Francisco earthquake. Now imagine how she evolved a costume like that -- I give you three guesses as to what it is. She is under escort of Russell, who will exhibit therein his dignity as the art editor of McClure's.

And speaking of McClure's, I am decidedly in royal disfavor. He hasn't had time to attend to it as yet, but I judge that about the end of this week he and I are going to have a fight that will ring down the annals of office history.

He is authority for the statement that I am still only a newspaper man. If he only knew how I wished that were true!

Damn the Highbrow game!

Your letter is the first I heard of Jacqueline -- which I take to be a periodical.

And I shall certainly go ahead and finish the Spanish tale, which the Smart Set might take -- I am not so sure but they wouldn't. There is a tale in my memory in the Smart Set which is told from the point of view of the frivolous little underskirt of Fanchette, which goes with her to Confession and Communion when she is about to cut out her prettily naughty ways and marry the gentleman. And if they'll stand for that they ought to stand for Don Pancho. But I wouldn't dare in McClure's.

179

Feb 15, 1927.

In answer to your long and cheerful letter, I havenoth ing to offer
now but melancholy. Yet I stand by what I said in my letter of yesterday
it is a great relief. I have a sense of freedom when I throw out my chest
and remember that I won't have to be compromising with my honesty any more
in order to make a natural born scamp keep to his obligations.

I am acquiring the gift of philosophy, I think; learning the law
of compensation. Such a thing, five years ago, would have broken my
pride absolutely. Now, I find myself ready to buckle down again and
get busy at another job.

Dizzied a little but still game -- that is the way it has taken
me. And so no more of this for the present; it cannot come to a head-
until next week, and it will work itself out somehow, through war and
suffering.

Gilbert White told me a jag story today which pleased me. Addie
Mizner had a friend who was too heavy fond of the booze. One day,
Addie tried to reason with him about his awful habit.

"You ought to swear off," said Addie.

"Got that beaten a mile," said the drunk. "I have a system. Got
all drinks estimated on the jagical unit. Champagne is ten, for example
and Scotch Highballs seven. I've found that my capacity is 54. If
I keep down below 54 every session, I'll be an easy winner and never get
drunk again."

That night he came in just able to navigate. He was paralyzed,

spiflicated, dead drunk.

"You damn fool, I thought you had a sy stem," said Addie.

"Have." said the drunk, "But I unnerestimated beer!"

February 2, 1907/

I am off in the morning. I have pulled out from the office and shall see it no more for a fortnight. By the time I return, some of the issues may have straightened themselves out. It is a thing of infinite delicacy, complicated as it is (oh, this is so mighty low down; just for Rufus and you) by a love affair between Miss Cather and the Chief, which, with his customary chivalry, he has given away to Mrs. McClure. Mrs. McClure is on the warpath, and it comes just at the time when the duplicity of Miss Cather( who is only shadowing the Chief in this) has opened a campaign to get me out of the place. I wish that I could chuck it all; but so great a pressure is being brought upon me by part of the Board of Directors to stay and try to clear off the wreck. One of the most puzzling things is the fact that Miss Cather has the whole Christian Science thing in her grasp, and that the best thing in the world includes keeping her here at least for six months.

Miss Cather's excessive worship for the Chief is a thing to which I have been blind like a fool all this time, until certain things crystallized it in my mind. Isn't this a frightful situation? Imagine if you can a business running with an ything of it at kind in it, and imagine the position of me in the business.

I most earnestly assure you that I pity her more than I have pitied anyone for an age; more than I pity myself, who am caught in the tangles of this queer affair. For there isn't anything genuine in it with him; he is simply palying her, while she takes it seriously, and,

like Ade's girl, "plays the short end in Cupid's book." This is only
a little piece of the most damnably complicated situation which I ever

struck. I'm not going to carry this situation with me to
Bermuda, I assure you. It is going to slough off me with the change of
scene. Much will happen, I suppose, before I get back; and it may
be that I shall find the situation all settled for me.

And just to think of the respite I am getting from winter -- that
winter weather which I have found so damnably unnecessary. For
Bermuda is a summer land, where one wears summer clothes and loafs
under palms. They say that you can tell the gulf stream fifty miles
off by the line of steam; and then everyone not engaged with sea
sickness ducks below to get into his summer clothes. I shall also
run up against the British government for the first time. Oh, I shall
have great doings with myself. I am going alone, since Hallie doesn't
want to break with the art school and is going abroad in the summer any-
way; and I shall let the winds of adventure blow -- as strongly as
they can blow in a blooming summer resort where they raise the vegetable
supplies of the New York market.

That's my main thought just now!

Sunday Morning;

It was a great deal more of a fight than I could have supposed;
and the directors, it seems now, are coming out second best, as I
thought from the first that they would. I had a talk of an hour
and a half with S. S. McClure in which I spoke to him as he has
never been spoken to in his whole life long. By the end of it, I
had him a mush of concession, and he agreed to put things in my hands.
But then he went home, saw Mrs. McClure, was encouraged to believe that
he was the greatest editor in the world, and came back in the morning
raging crazy for gore. It came to the question whether they should put
him out -- his remaining and mine too has become impossible since I
painted him to himself as he is -- and the directors seem simply to
have lost their nerve. The thing while holds them back, when they come
face to face with it, is the proposition that if he goes out of the
business he is likely to land in the asylum for good. I am not certain
that McClure has not got them conveyed that impression himself. Last
night, I fotegathered with Bennett late in the evening, and he advised
me simply to jam in the good old resignation. It can't take effect
for a month or so, and in the meantime I shall be working far from the
office. I had a large tentative offer last night, and shall not
starve at any rate. I'm sorry to fall down on this wholly impossible
task, but I guess that it was too great for mere man. What is going to
become of that concern, the Lord almighty knows.

I hereby cease telling you my troubles, than which I have written
little of late except the matter concern ing Bermuda. Speaking of which
hole in the world, I learn that Mrs. Dunham, the devoted wife of Dr.
Dunham, is a sister of Wolcott Balestier, and by the same token a

sister in law of Rudyard Kipling. I was introduced as the editor of *Menc* as I was ever in Bermuda; and not a word did they say about Kipling for anyone -- which is a great example of breeding I take it.

The thing makes me feel a little foolish, because I remember that I talked a great deal of letters and of living writers. However, since they are telling me by mail that we shall have to mix a great deal in New York, I deem that I didn't saw myself off completely. I find also that they are vulgarly, hatefully rich.

I was speaking of the Kiplings and the punhams to Harry McClure, him as used to run the syndicate and is now having a syndicate of his own since he went out with the break. He knows Rudyard very well, it seems, and is a most intense personal admirer. He lived with the family and did their fetching and carrying for them in the time when Rudyard lay sick in New York with this same fever that so nearly carried him off.

I haven't been down to see Frank since I came back; I haven't had time to do anything but fight, but if the time comes, I am going down there this afternoon -- to find, doubtless, that he is chasing about with his same stage bunch.

Aren't you getting a little tired of the Thaw case?

Viola Roseboro' (Mackenzie has named her Victoria Rex) gave me a long talk the other evening about XXXXXXXX Mrs. Langtry. Her stage days go back to the heyday when Booth and the others were on the great were in their glory, and she knows all the gossip of the time. She describes Mrs. Langtry's acting as simply abominable, but raves, as does every woman in the world, about her beauty. And she mentioned in especial her eyes, with that perfect socket which is given to but few pairs of eyes. This was brought out by the fact that Miss Rose, being

at the Peer Gynny matinee, looked over and beheld Mrs. Langtry that was
in a box. She and her lordling are quietly visiting this country. Rose
says that her looks are simply passable now. She went on to say that
when Oscar Wilde died in his terrible disgrace, Mrs. Langtry was the
only woman in Great Britain who had the nerve to go to the funeral.
"After that," says she, "I take off my hat to that British prostitute."

This is but a dull letter. I have had it so hard and heavy,
and have been holding so tightly onto my nerve, that I haven't much
left in me. But thank the Lord it is near the end, and the restoration
to a sane and healthy atmosphere will undoubtedly straighten me out.
Sam Adams told me the last time he saw me that it was time for me to
leave for my own sake; that no man can associate day after day with a
lunatic and keep his nerves. That's the thing that has bustled me, and
the thing that more than anything else accounts for the vagaries of
Miss Cather. So, although I have failed to clean the Augean stables,
it is certain that I have done about as much as any man could have done
and that it will come to a period of rest. And I'm rather happy over
the prospect.

Tomorrow, when I have space to pack it up, I shall send you a little
gift. And I feel like closing this letter by the announcement that
the Devil is dead!

187

Tuesday;

A letter 1 st night from S. S. McClure insincerely praising me and offering me his friendship closes the whole thing. He then proceeded to fire Miss Bray, for whom I must get a job, and the whole thing is sealed. There is a feeling of relief, though I feel old and imagine myself with wrinkles and the darkening skin of age. The mirror, I may say, shows no such imaginations, and I look as smoothly young as ever. But that too will pass, and things will straighten, and I shall live to laugh at this thing, which I came in the end to look upon with a seriousness.

I'm more than half inclined, in case I can make certain arrangements, to try the free lance game. Cosgrave has a series of articles suiting me to a dot, which he wants done. There is a sound basis of support in the sun; and I might, being thrown up against the necessity of the thing, write a little fiction. Philipps, who has offered me a job which I shall decline on the American, will also throw free lance writing in my way. After all, it is a writer and not an editor which I want to be. It is a perplexing thing -- on the one hand, the offer of things which are a certainty for making a living; on the other, the chance of something like a success along the lines upon which I want to succeed. But there is a month more of nominal employment on McClure's, and after that I can be ready to make the decision.

This storm is passed. The skirts even of the storm are drawing away Two dominant natures have clashed, I suppose, and the more insane and less scrupulous has won. But I guess that in the long run the other has won too.

This thing Viola Roseboro' told me. I believe that she has lien

on it as a story.

There was in some city of the south a young man of good family
who was a hopeless sot. Finally, it degenerated into the delerium
tremens. He struck a spasm in which he nearly died, and two of his
friends sat up all night with him holding him down. Along toward
morning, he fell asleep, and they tried to get some sleep too. They
were wakened by his screams. He was at the window.

"Look! he cried. "There is Jim Robinson trying to hang himself on
that tree."

They pulled him back and laid him out on the floor again.

"For God's sake, man, don't begin this again. Be quiet now!"

"But boys, I tell you Robinson is trying to hang himself. I saw
him putting the rope around his neck in the tree. Let me get out there."

"Now that's all right, old man. You go to sleep," and the like.

Finally, they held him down until they did get him to sleep. And
in the morning, as you already know, Robinson was found hanging to a
limb -- Robinson who had no motive in the world that anyone ever
heard of.

Don't be discouraged about the stories. I'll tell you a thing
which has been gradually coming into my conviction, and which a little
talk with the other magazine men has made me believe true. The market
for short stories is getting a little bit overstocked. There is a
bull market just now. In six months more, that will adjust itself.
He's selling for you in a rather dull time. You'll hit it big. I am
surer of nothing else. And it is great good news that you are mixing
in studios and things and receiving the homage that is your due.
You've been a little too retiring of life; the world which has been too
much with me, has been to little with you, and it is a great good thing
to get in and mix.

I'm sending you today(forgive that it was not yesterday) the
little gift that I saw in Bermuda and couldn't resist. I know that
I have given you another gift a little like it. But this was so
sulphitic in the way those two tears of rose ropped from the little
boss of coral, that I had to have it for you. I bought it on your
birthday. There is a funny thing about the corals of Bermuda. There
are coral islands, but that same coral is just a plain rock, and in no
wise like these ornamental corals. But the tourist insists on corals,
so they import them in huge quantities from Naples, and, there being
no duty, they have a cheapness which simply jumps them out of the
show case.

And that is about all today from the ex-highbrow.

Thursday;

Backings, fillings, commotions, and hesitations take up my days.
The human brainstorm over on Twenty-Third street rages and proclaims
himself the greatest editor in the world; I figure as a mere amoabus

with a cracked brain who couldn't see it. He can't understand it,
he says, except on the theory that I am cracked in the head. There
isn't much in the way of human emotion that the man hasn't trotted
himself through in these five days.

It is up to me to decide how I will spend the day
the middle was how that is the greatest editor on the
continent. Poor, distraught, he lay alone, and so on.

On the day after the great bust he called up the American and insisted
on seeing Miss Tarbell and Phillips, both of whom he has been calling
scoundrels and skates. When they arrived, they found that he just
wanted to blow off on them his opinion of himself. Miss Tarbell said
after it was all over that she felt as though she had seen a man who
had been run over by a truck. A bruised, broken, muddied, weeping,
pitiful thing -- oh, it has been hard on the emotions. And yet, that
very afternoon, a certain well-known lady author came into the shop,
and he tried to sit on her lap and to tell her how different it might
have been with his life if they had met before.

I never can remember for fifteen minutes consecutively Frank's
Boston address. I went down day before yesterday to tell him the news,
and found that he had skipped to Boston while I was in Bermuda. So will
you tell him that the weary watch is over and that my first opinion of

McClure's, gained in the times when we used to have luncheon with
them, remains my last/

Harder and harder it becomes to tell what I am going to do. I
am trying very hard to persuade myself that it would be the best thing
for me to do the free lance. But there are a number of things with
good livings in them right in sight, and I rather hate to make a decision.

Myra Kelley became the mother of a boy last week. On the very next
day, the baby died.

And last night, I went out of the insincere highbrow game and
drifted to Park Row where men are man and sane. I dined with Al
Thomas, best of all kinds on Park Row and a man with whom I could be
real friends were there time in life for all the friends we like to
make. He is full of the Thaw case. The rumor has been about Park
Row that he and Joe Fox, the other man on the case, have smashed my
space record; but it turns out to be a base untruth.

It was careless of me about Bermuda, and je m'accuse. But as a
matter of fact, I knew that I would go down on a steamer and come back
on its next trip. It never occurred to me that it could carry down
letters on the trip it made to bring me back!

Cosgrave telephones that he wants to see me, and I have to. I think
he is trying to crowd a job on me. I hesitate now between just six
propositions: Also, I am going in now to rewrite that Spanish yarn,
for which I have acquired quite a bunch.

I send with this two clippings.

STATE
BOND
March 24, 1907
187

Friday afternoon.

I'd like to have a stenographic account of my meeting with Kaufman. It was the pink, perultimate limit. Imagine for yourself a Jew gentleman, slim, rather handsome, with something of the sweetness and assurance of Channing Pollock's smile about him, and a flow of talk, metaphor and slang(some of it not for the ears of ladies alas) which ripples out of him like water over a fall. It never stops. He has the persistence and egotism of S. S. McClure and the flux of words of ahem! myself. You tire of one subject and jog him on his mental elbow. Zip! he is off on a new direction, but his maze always returns to one thing -- himself and his grand projects. When first I came among him, he was going to make a hundred thousand a year for the allies -- a hundred thousand the first year. Before the afternoon was over, he had made a half a million in his mind -- and all with a hypnotic eye fixed on you and a smile of the very sweetest rippling over his lips. Then the pipe drew freer. He laid his hand on a bundle of books:

"Here is the greatest medical encyclopedia in the world -- the greatest in the universe. Look at this list of names. Imagine yourself up before a Rube selling this at apremium with the magazine to back it. We wouldn't throw you down. He couldn't throw you down, any more than you could throw down a pink and perfumed virgin just dropping into your arms! I'll tell you what I'll do. I do it because I like you and you're going to worth a cool hundred thousand dollars a year to us -- and to yourself before we are through with this -- I'll throw it in! I'll make an interest in that a part of the deal. Say, you come with us, and we'll do more. As soon as you've got the magazine on it's feet -- that won't be more than six months -- we'll start a paper. We'll be Harmsworth and Pierson. Now you go home and write right away.

a swell prospectus, setting out what you are. You don't have to be
modest. we won't let you be modest. Just whoop yourself up. That's
what we want. Whoop ourselves up. Why, look at me. All I've done
is a preparation for this. I dropped two hundred dollars a day waking
up Europe -- you know, I was idea man for Pearson -- just to get into
this thing. I felt I was ripe for it. I said to myself, look here.
you're twenty-nine and getting old. After a man is thirty five, he
ain't any good at starting things. his ideas don't have any more gin-
ger. Six years before I go on the shelf as a magnate and rest and
pile up the money, and every day counts. So I started. Now don't you
waste a day. You pipe out that prospectus telling what you are and
what you propose to do this very afternoon and I'll have it out on the
road in the morning.

"Stories? Why, we'll write 'em ourselves. Look at me. three
novels a year and just for fun -- that's what I did last year when I
was resting. Hear what I did with my last novel? Well, Moffatt and
Yard said it was twenty thousand words too short to sell at a dollar and
a quarter. All right, said I. Hand it over. Next afternoon I was
in with the copy -- twenty thousand words and they couldn't tell where
I'd put 'em in. This fooling along and taking your time is as much rot
in writing as it is in getting ads. I bet Shakespeare never foleed long
over a play. I'll bet if you knew, the stage manager just came to him
and said, 'Bill, we want a show.' 'All right,' says Bill, 'when have you
got to get action on rehearsals.' About two weeks, says the stage man-
ager. Pretty short time, says Shakespeare, stalling. What do you
want a play on?' says Bill. 'What's the matter with Denmark?' says
the stage manager. 'I'll look into it,' says Bill. And ten days later,
Hamlet is all in and they're rehearsing. I can give points to those
literary editors. They don't understand Shakespeare because they ain't
practical. Speed and ginger -- that's the game.

"About those stories. I give you the ideas and you write them. That's the go. Now here's one -- say, suppose you do it tonight after you get the prospectus about yourself done, and I'll take it out on the road and show it as a sample -- put an assumed name on it -- great new discovery -- rising author -- we peg on at it and make the hit of the century. Call him John D'Arcy. We make John D'Arcy a house hold word all over the length and breadth of the land. Gets to be a mystery. Who is John D'Arcy? Reporters trying to find out. Literary editors trying to interview him. No go. Promised to keep the anonymity of that contributor. Dark hints about a society woman. Sunday papers full of it. Leaks out in the yellow that it's a mom de plume of Roosevelt. Washington correspondents on the job. Official denial from the White House. Then we spring it. Our pictures, and how two young literary men fooled the world in every newspaper. We'll hit the record for collaborations, and we'll own six autos apiece.

"But about those stories. Here's a sample. The man who has his theories about people and starts to put 'em in operation. That's the way I work. I get a theory and it kills 'em all dead while I work it out. Now when I was selling Gibson pictures, I cleaned up a hundred thousand on the Gibson portfolio, Hearst said to me --" I mustn't tell you what Hearst said; this is an expurgated edition -- "and I said to him: " same limitation on my language --"I was in Los Angeles then. I just leased wires to three of the big newspapers in the Middle West, because I had said to myself, 'A man will always talk to you if you get him on a leased wire and the more you spend ostentatiously the more you get back.' It cost me two thousand dollars and I made twenty, but every one of 'em came in.

"Well, this fellow gets an idea that you can get anything out of a man if you get a hold on his vanity and keep it over him. And he's

hired to make William G. Backus of the Backus Safety Razor Co. come into
the trust. Backus -- big advertiser. Has his picture in all the papers
shaving himself with a safety razor, one of his own, and prints over it:
'Why enrich the barbers.' This fellow lays for him with a camera. He
finds him one morning, when he has a rapid engagement to meet his wife,
getting shaved by a barber, and he takes a flush light of him on the
spot. Work out the rest of it yourself. The fellow that wrote
the Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum can do that right off the bat. It wasn't
--oh, of course I meant The Picaroons. Always getting things twisted.
Say, how did you come to collaborate with Oliver Herford. The Sunday
magazines! In three years you'll never hear of 'em. Why, I could have
had a slice of them. Now I want you to get out a prospectus of an author
too. Put down Kipling and Mrs. Burnett and Robert Chambers -- no,
I haven't seen 'em, but do you think for a minute that any author will
object to being advertised free -- and no, we don't want Mark Twain;
he's a back number -- and Alice Hegan Rice, she's the girl with
hefty sales --" etc. etc., according to sample.

Well, I liked the beggar. personality is an unaccountable thing.
It didn't seem to weigh me, as the ravings of McClure do. I suspect
that it was because Kaufman didn't assume any moral cent. He's a frank
pirate, while McClure is using his moral insanities as an end toward
playing that he is reforming the world. But when, an hour later, he
whispered to me that if Cosgrave and I would pool our stock with him
we could drive out Moffatt and Yard after a year or two, I put it
with his intention to get out a prospectus of any old author, and
regarded a vista of dishonors which I must either comply with or fight.
And when I began to talk to the rest of them, and heard that their
first scheme was to publish twelve Christy pictures with twelve poems
about the American girl by different American poets; when, more-

over, Kauffman said that he had asked twelve employees of the apartment house where he lived to read Judge and the Saturday Evening Post and they all picked Judge as the favorite, wherefore something like a serious Judge was to be our ideal -- when all these things were thrown at me, I saw that it wasn't my game. And the next day I disappointed Cosgrave by throwing him down and pulling out.

I regretted it a little. It may have been the tide in the affairs of men, but I don't think so. And then I hated not to oblige Jack, and I really hated with a great hatred to pull out and leave Kauffman before I had heard three or four more days of him.

That leaves it between the new Sunday Magazines, which I haven't been formally offered yet, and free lancing. Phillipps is wild to have me free lance. He has offered me several things to do in the way of writing. Notably, he has bitten at my idea about doing the Western mining camps, and he would send me tomorrow to Iowa for a week or so to report the great review that is sweeping over the state. Rex Beach, damn him, did a mediocre job on a Goldfield prize fight -- a thing I have always wanted to do for a magazine. Cosgrave still offers that series about spiritualism, and the Sun and Times are waiting for me to fill out the chinks. Also Hapgood of Collier's wants to see me to offer me something in the article line. The prospects look very well on paper. The Sun made me the old offer to come back, and the Times wanted to send me to London as correspondent. Three years ago, it would have been a good thing for me to go to London for a year or two, but I am a little old now to be going on with my journalistic education, which is all that there would be in that; and besides, Riek, the new manager to whom I talked, told me that it would be necessary for me to do London Society consecutive and earnest -- teas at four, dinners and receptions in the evenings -- and thereat Iagsged.

Sunday, March 23, 1907.

You said case and plaitive note over your writings duly at hand.
It must be a frightful discouragment to work as you have, month after
month -- to clean up that really remarkable body of work -- and still to
get no more visible return than you are getting. As a matter of fact,
you are a victim to a greater extent than you can realize, of the limit-
ations of editors. Intelligent reading is the rarest thing in the mag-
azine game; nine tenths of those who put things in the magazines are
under the hypnosis of names and of personalities. They've met an
author. He is in their minds; or they know the name of an author who
has got himself talked about. That is the thing which shoves him
into threequarts of the magazines. You have chosen, for which I greatly
respect you, not to playthe game on personality It will all come
in another way. Some one of your tales, probably the one you think
least of, will make a sudden hit. They'll be talking of you; and the
very stuff that is being KENNY sent back now will be fought for then.

I am saying this rather badly, so that I don't know whether you get the
idea -- but some day when I see you I'll elucidate at length.

My sorrow over my own works pathetically different and pathetically
more logical. I have a reputation, through my collaborations, my
brotherhood to my brother, my fame as a reporter on the Sun, and
my late lamented job, totally out of proportion to my performance.
If I could only be turning out stories two and three a week!

I get through with McClure's officially KXTHEEXEND OF next week.
In return for my holding down the office while the human brainstorm was
in Europe, I shall have a two weeks on pay with nothing to do after that
That isn't a favor, it is a right. In those two weeks, unless the
exigencies of free lancing take me out of town, I too shall try to
write some stories. I really don't know whether I shall ever

be able to summon the mood as you do; but I do know that I can sit before
white paper a long time. Neither have I anythi ng to write about;
vut there are four or five buried attempts in the barrel which I can at
least work over, and there may be something to show for. At any rate,
I am willing to work; and with the r lease of repression from that raving
maniac, there has been a return of memory and concentration and a few
other things which were slipping from me.

It won't be McClure's fault if things aren't made as unpleasant
for me as th y can be in the week that is to remain. I worked over
the first number of the story of Montana and turned it in before I went
to Bermuda. He approved of it and sent it through to type without
a wo rd. Last Thursday, I turned in the sec ond part, over which I
had done a better job. He rejected it utterly. He said that it was
the work of a child. I revised it a little to meet several criticisms
which he had made, and send it back saying that I would hear no more
from him about it; that I was doing this work only as a favor, and at
the first yelp from him I would drop the whole thing. .. he hasn't yelped.
Oh, what a relief to get out of his clutches?

Next week, I shall settle up the Collier matter. I shall know
a great deal more about my own little future by then.

And let me know how Moyle comes out with the stories. Sometimes I
wonder if you wouldn't do etter to take your literary peddling into
your own hands? Think about it.

One more anecdote, before I close, about this man Kauffman. He was talking his hardest, when he said, "Got a pencil?" and before I could produce it, he had reached into my breast pocket and drawn one out. ? I expected some rapid fire figures, but no. He held up one hand, with the fingers spread, and tapped finger after finger with the pencil, while he said:

First! etc. Ssecond! etc. Third! etc. Fourth! etc. Fifth! etc!" after which, without another word, and without using the pencil for anything else/he slipped it back into my pocket. We simply wanted it to gesture with.

STATE
BOND

Monday.

H och! Whoop! Io! eke Banzai! Sound the pipe and tabor! Telegraph to Henry James! et the little adjectives re-joice, the merry little adjectives. Be there merriment, not the banal and noisy rejoicing of the lowbrow, but the gentle rejoicing of the highrow. For I have reached it, I have attained it. I have hipped this subtlety business. I have got it where it lives, also in the tight places. I have roped, thrown and hog tied it. Behold, I have been called subtle.

It happened thus: One afternoon last week, as I was about to leave the Club, I fell afoul of Gilbert White. Upon my neck he fell, even on my collar. "I've got a lot of fellow townsmen here from Grand Rapids" -- so made he the oration to me -- "And for God's sake stay here and drink a few of my highballs and help entertain. They have nothing but money, but ain't I enough?" So I sat for two hours and a half and drank more Scotch than was good for me, while Gilbert White and I, back and forth, bandied humorous and near-entertaining conversation. They seemed to like it, and White told me that afterwards he made them buy three copies of "The Picaroons," which is good business.

Behold, today White and I were dining at the Club, and he entertained the near neighbors by an account thereof. "And," said he, "they sat with their mouths open while Bill and I shot back and forth subtleties that went over their heads." There was a thrill went up and down me like a girl getting proposal number one. I followed the lead. I was the cagey kid. I mentioned several of his remarks, which led him to say: "This for a subtlety from Bill:"No, Lilian Russel doesn't marry any more. She shrinks from the publicity of the marriage ceremony.'" He was certain of it. I was subtle. That was subtle. Oh, ye who conquer kingdoms, where is your glory?

Wednesday;

I had just finished the enclosed yawp, when I get a very encouraging letter from you, but mildly patronizing me on that subtlety business, and alleging that I can't be a stylist because I haven't achieved subtlety of style. "You are not Rosicrucian. You are not Japanese. You are not even Early English. O, do be early English before it is too late!" But the proposition that a man can't be a stylist without being subtle catches me where I live. I begin to think that it is no use trying to live, move and have one's being without being subtle. I have concluded that for the non-sutler there is no place in the heavens above or in the earth below or the waters under the earth; no hope, either in this life or the next; no place, whether in Heaven, Hell, earth, Purgatory, or Limbo. What will happen to him when he dies, I don't know. I imagine that they will tag him and festoon him with adjectives and turn him out into the open spaces of the outer dark, there to ponder a Henry James sentence until Time shall come no more. I know that won't be his punishment, however. That thought is only the idea of a plain, unvarnished, unsubtle obviouser. The punishment that will be meted out to him will be something subtle and beyond the conception of a Person from the Coarse West.

This subtle business is getting serious. It is in the back of my head night and day. The past year has been nothing but a series of call-downs from friends, employers, fellow workers, because I'm not subtle -- and I never heard of the God damn thing until a yer and a half ago. I can't find what it is, why it is, or what I will have to do to attain it. I can only have faith, like the Scotch servant that believes she has committed the Unpardonable Sin, and thanks God that, in his mercy, he has seen fit to damn her.

But here comes the final jab of all, and Willie's eternal damnation.
You write and inform me that no man can be a stylist until he
becomes subtle. One by one, I have been giving up to the thing all this
year. I have reconciled myself to the fact that I can't understand the
spirit of modern times because I am not subtle, and I have rather gloried
in that fact, seeing as modern times pain me more than some. I have
reconciled myself to my fate in the matter of psychological inter-
pretation, understanding though with pain that one cannot comprehend
and express the psychology of the Merest Clod without being subtle.
I had reconciled myself to the fate of being no poet, fully compre-
hending that one cannot express modern thought in poetry unless he is
subtle. That was a hard blow to take, but I thrust out the willing
jaw and the happy cheek and took it. But I did cling, as a condemned
criminal to his Bible, to the belief that an English style, if not
actually mine, was attainable. But no. Nothing doing. To the tall
timber and the low, retreating forehead for mine. A am not subtle;
I am not psychological. I am not of the cult of James. I am not
even stimulating. O, do be stimulating before it is everlastingly too
late! And Thomas Babington Macaulay and I, both condemned to be
no stylists because we are not subtle, fold up the little mss. under
our arms and go back, back to the tall timber. (I know that Macaulay is
not subtle because I asked Viola Roseboro' and she said "Heavens, no!
Child, what puts such notions into your head?")

But I've learned at last what that word subtle is.

It is a cuss word.

I am waiting and watching for a settlement of my affairs, which have taken another turn. A rather decent proposition may be passed up to me by Collier's Weekly. They are thinking of offering me a retainer to cast my experience on the new supplement, and act as a consulting editor, with the rider that I am to be first on call for them for any articles that they want done; they to pay me my regular rate in addition for any articles that I may do. That would give me lots of time and no worry, and it seems almost a shame to take the money. I am to lunch in state with Collier tomorrow in his Gramercy Park mansion, and talk the whole thing over. But there's nothing at all settled yet except that I close with S. S. McClure an Saturday and am really out in the cold.

This being Holy Week, all the theatres except the big successes are closed, and the Players Club is full of idle actors who are celebrating the Pentential Season by drinking highballs. The unadulterated actor is something fierce. It is my delight to get three of him into a circle and start him talking about himself -- trying to see if I can beat out the record established by S. S. McClure. Mackenzie enters the bonds of matrimony on Tuesday. That marriage is the joke of the town. The McClure's have invited everyone they ever had business relations with, and most of the invitations have gone to men at their offices without including their wives. They are asking about town if the list was taken from Who's Who in the City Directory.

And in the meantime, S. S. McClure still holds up everyone he meets and asks why I did it. He is chasing Sam Adams now; for he believes that I got Sam to do it. Yesterday, in the hope of getting me to the office and putting me on the grill, he sent around to ask me if I'd go to Mexi co to do a story for him. I politely refused. The office owes me a great vote of thanks. For he is spending all his time

brooding and peevingly over me, and everyone is left alone to work except
the sadly burdened Mackenzie. If anyone ever suffered for love, it is
that fine, tall lad.

And now to turn my subtless style toward the last Chapter of the
Story of Montana! ®

I know one thing you do when I come to New York from Montana, the Northwest. That is, I know that I am going to make it. Before the Prussian folk, Daisy, Frank or I, is any one friend going to see us much of your presence as he desires? I prophesy you'll have us all scrapping. Popularity is a fatal thing!

Friday night.

I begin by explaining that, while I am dead serious on the main propositions of that subtlety business, there was a lot of josh in the letter I wrote you about it day before yesterday -- so don't get sore!

I am a little more settled in my affairs. Today, I lunched in great state and some eclat in the mansion of Robert Collier on Gramercy Square. We talked over propositions a little, and he made me an offer which is characteristic of Collier's, the firm that loves to lose its money. He isn't ready to say that he is going ahead on that Sunday magazine scheme, and he isn't quite sure that the editor of the Saturday Evening Post (whatever his name is; I have spent three minutes trying to remember it) is going to reject their offer. So he asks me if I will go on a regular salary with them, I to be on call to do articles until such time as we determine whether or no we will go ahead on the Sunday magazine scheme. I have accepted that, and shall probably make a start in a week or two with a series of articles on the medium business, which is interesting Collier mightily. So there is the future taken care of a little time ahead, and nothing to worry about except that I may not make good on the article s.

This Collier is a straight, calm, handsome youth, mightily easy for me to talk to. He has a little of the nouvea u riche hanging about him, I think; and he takes it out by an extra haughtiness which the real thing doesn't have to show. But his mind and mine click, which was never true of mine and that of S. S. McClure, possibly Collier is not subtle. Mick( who was at the luncheon too) says that I have

joined the Genius Trust; and, indeed, it seems as though they were trying to cull all the semi-journalistic talent in sight to put it at work in their shambles of the morghty.

Mark Twain and Mr. Dooley have formed a new society. It is called the "God Damned the Human Race League". They are considering the application of W. D. Howells for full membership. Mark says that he isn't sure about Howells. says that he isn't vicious enough.

Such a day as today was! I was moved by spring and youth to blwo myself for a hamsom and take the family a-driving. Now and then, one does discover a good point about this here East. One of 'em is spring. Of course, it isn't in it with the breaking of Fall across the hills when the year wakes in California, but what can you expect of a land where it thunders and snows and freezes and does all the other unnecessary things.

Say, what are you anyhow but an effete, highbrowed, cultured, bean-eating, bigoted, beautiful Easterner?

Monday;

I have taken the King's shilling from Collier's. I am to do
particles for them for awhile on salary until we see whether I am to
stay with that writing game or not. Then, they will offer me the
editorship of their new Sunday magazine; and I shall, I hope, have
the guts to turn it down and stay with the pen. The present salary
is not so great as mine on McClure's, but the family will not starve.

In the meantime; madame, bean-eating, beautiful Bostonian Easter-
ner, I have fallen. From the water cart. In grand, successive whoops.
The removal of myself from the clutches of the human brain storm
deserved as much. Yet now, when the clouds have rolled away and I have
ceased to hate rum and Gilbert White, I perceive that it was accidental.
It was an accident in Wonderland jag; full of whimsical and sulphitic ad-
vantures. It started at four o'clock in the afternoon, when I met
White, Ira Remsen, Owen Johnson, and an architect named Takau, and started
for a walk with them. It seemed good to go to the Bronx Park and see
the little animals, which we done like we said. We perceived a low
saloon; we entered; we refreshed ourselves. By and by, we perceived
another. We entered. More refreshment. Again; and this time those as
had been drinking beer changed to Scotch and those who had been drinking
Scotch to beer. It was about that time that we perceived the time of
day and the fact that it would be impossible for any of us, ma rried,
or unmarried, to go home to dinner. There were three ma rried men

--- Johnson, Remsen, and I leave you to guess the other. We matched to
see who should show his courage first; and I drew luck, for Hallie was
not in so that I left word by the nurse. Next it was Johnson's
turn. And this, as I remember it, was some of the conversation:

"Yes, darling. Several of them. Including one Bill Irwin who is
listening. He is disgraceful. Hear him whoop. And Gilbert White is

chasing hens outside. I'm the only sober one. Really. See how steady I
talk. All right, darling. Ten o'clock for church. I'll remember."
Then Remsen sat down with the telephone and his God. His was the hardest
case of all, for he had company coming to dinner. When the maid an-
swered instead of his wife, he basely sent word by her and hung up the
phone with a haste. And at that moment, over came the proprietor of
the place. He was laughing.

"Say, you got me into trouble, young feller," he said to Owen.
"That lady that was sitting listening to you was my wife. I gave her
the same talk last Tuesday, and she has just said to me, 'aha!'"

## CHAPTER II.

I had just discovered that every servant in the Wilmartin Inn
was part of my regular retinue, because he had my initials on the collar
— I had just given the bootblack a quarter to say "Hail master!" — when
we perceived, all as once, the Brunette. There was some other
blood in her; the rest said nigger, but I am damned if I don't
think it was Indian. At any rate, she was dark enough for Rufus and
beatiful as the trees of ebon that stood at the gate of the Temple.
She smiled back at us, and then smiled down on a little man just one
size larger than the Midget Village. He wasn't saying a word. He
was sitting like a ramrod, except that at intervals he would start out
of his seat and try to go somewhere. Every time he did that, she would
take him by the shoulders and sit him down hard. Through it all,
and through all that happened, he never once said a word or let and
expression play over his face. We whispered over to her that we were
a great deal better company. She flashed teeth like the young ewes that
come up from the washing. But always she shook her head. And once,
we heard her whisper something to the waiter. It concerned "him," who
seemed to be asleep up stairs. We wrote her a little note and signed

["it with fancy names telling her that she'd better shake the g Duty and come\nto talk to us. X_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x

and say, "That is not the one." He had run through about twenty hats in that fashion, when the girl came back to look for him. She swept on him like a cyclone, went through the hat rack, found his hat, clapped it on him, took him by the collar and raised him to his feet. And so they two went out into the night. I think that her name is Delia, Mother of Drunks.

## CHAPTER III.

"Frank! Frank! That -- -- -- -- -- -- and -- -- to -- -- said that I said Jesus Christ."

"Well, you done it, see!"

"Frank, did I do it before I got into this place or after ?"

"Not making bones of it, you did it after. Right in the dining room."

"In the presence of ladies? Excuse me mentioning them in such a place, but did I do it right in the presence of ladies?"

"You did."

"Don't believe it. Never use such language. Never. Taught better."

"Now come on, Bill. Get into the car. Tomorrow is Easter. I've got to get up and go to church."

"Frank, here's fifty cents. Pretty near all I got in the world. Put it in the plate for me 'cause I said Jesus Christ."

This is what Frank was just pickled enough so that the fifty cents assumed a great importance. He stood balancing it in his hand, and then a light came into his eye. He slid it surreptitiously to the bar tender to pay for the drinks. But Bill, the Living Grouch, caught him at it and stayed his hand.

"No you don't. Put that fifty cents to no prohillen uses. Refrain to desecrate. Dedicated to cause of religion 'cause I said Jesus Christ."

And they, too, vanished out into the night of the Bronx.

At that moment I turned, and was confronted by the lad of the
dappled palfrey. It was he. There was not the slightest doubt in
the world. But how changed since we first jousted in the Bronx. I
had hardly recognized him and stifled the smile of recognition, when
Gilbert White burst into the room.

(to be continued in our next)

Monday morning:

Your working discouragement is natural after the pounding on the social nerves which you took in New York. I cannot take the rejection from Collier's very жжжжжжжжжжж seriously. Neither Collier nor McClure was made to delight in a thing like The Country in the Beads; I should have been tremendously surprised if they had liked it. As I know it from the idea, it was made for Harper's, Stribner's or a Century; never for the middle-class publications. I am coming to the

belief that, if rejections didn't bother you as much, it would be the best thing in the world for you to handle your own writings. I am moved thereunto by what my brother told me of Reynolds. He says that R. got after him a long time ago to handle some work. He tried R/ out on some of his occasional prose stunts. Reynolds had them three months; nothing doing. Wallace got tired, took them away, and sold them all within two days. I'm not sure but that the editors are getting pretty sick of the agent. game and, believe me, an **disproved** writer. I'll be all alone in a room with no one to talk to. I would rather die than be a best-seller. What about you?

I was supposed to begin work for Collier's this morning. As a matter of fact, I did little with it all. I have salved my conscience by crossing off the two days of work which I did last week -- or the two afternoons, in one of which you assisted. I started for Collier's, was side tracked at the American to deliver my Sun yarn, found that they wanted 26 lines cut out of the Bubble of Dreams (It is in page form to lead off the July number) and was cutting it out when I fell in with Peter Dunne. Was there any more doing? There was not. Dunne is with me a bad habit. We wanted to talk newspaper and I was his boy. I caught him telephoning to Robert Collier, making an appointment to lunch. He butted me into the game; and we lunched pleasantly with tale and talk. To Collier I cannot quite warm up; he is a little too much of the snob at bottom, though Peter says that it is superficial. Late in the luncheon, E. S. Martin came in. A fine, clean, Yankee; and so deaf( a thing which I never knew before) that the world has to come through him through a high-power speaking trumpet. Miss Tarbell, when I dropped in for a few more minutes, told me something charming about him. Peter and the Life bunch wanted to give him a dinner. They intended first to ask Mark Twain and Howells and all that crew. "No," says Peter, "Let's get together twenty of the best talkers in New York and let him know what it is to have ears." So they gathered their men, mainly from the democratic acquaintances of Peter. They got a Tammany politicians, Bowery men, brokers, boys just out of college -- the twenty best fellows they knew. Each was told to prime his best talk for Martin; and each was given a half an hour in the seat next to the honored guest. Martin staid until four o'clock in the morning; and he calls it the evening of his life. Doesn't that show Dunne? Great heart; the most worth while of all the literary persons

whom I have found in New York. I have just thought what his strong and
homely and altogether loveable face resembles. It is a cliff lit
with the sun.

I finished the Sun story at three o'clock this morning and shall
be on the anxious seat until I hear definitely from it. I'm not entirely
satisfied; far from satisfied in fact, though Harriet Sophia, the
Great Public, was interested when I read it to her. But it doesn't
get profoundly enough to it. I shall be more discouraged than is m
wont if they turn it down, for it means a great deal this first
plunge into the line.

Further( reporting all my progress at once) I have typed off the
ghost story, which I have named "As to the Blind," and am prepared to
slaughter and slaughter. With all its deficiencies, I can't improve it
a great deal, only smooth out the spots. The working out of all that
lace delicacy is a little past my present powers.

As soon as may be, I'll find and send the telephone book.

Billy was asked what he thought of Boston.

"Boston ain't nothing," he said; "only a street."

And now to think medium, dream it, worry over it, for a month to
come. I feel that this too is a test. If I get through with the
Sun story plus the medium story and do not fall down, it will be a
hurdle cleared.

Saturday mornign;

Munkey's, somewhat to my disgust, took Don Pancho de Santa Lucia
paying me one hundred and twenty bones therefore, and turned back the
story "Conscience." I had hoped that it would go the other way;
but now I shall peddle my conscience to the highest bidder. That is
very, very poor, that last. I think that it came from going to the
California dinner at the Lamb's the other night. I suppose that of
all the calamities which ever visited that club, the aforesaid dinner
was the worst. The earthquake was only a preparation to enable men to
live through it. They had scratched it together in something of a
hurry. Most of the assistants were actors and professional Bohemians.
Clay Greene, whose only claim to fame is that he is the Shepherd of the
Lamb's, called upon Delmas first. Delphin M. was characteristic.
I remember only one gem. He was telling how he thrust twenty dollars
in the hands of the cab driver and ordered him to drive out of the affect
ed area. They reached the top of the hill. "And," said Delmas, "I bade
the driver pause — any other man would have told the driver to stop —
and I said to him, "regard how the most melancholy spectacle that the
eye of man ever rested on; an imperial city, overwhelmed by this
unparalleled cataclysm, etc." One imagined what the driver said to
a man who was holding up the pricession to line out that variety of dope.
Then he called on Frederick Warde. Warde was drunk, though he didn't
show it until he got on his feet. He was in the grandiloquent and
tragic state wherein a man imagines that he is making the greatest
speech in the world whereas he is just grabbing words out of the air.
It was something firce; and through talk and laughter and incidental
joshing, it lasted a half an hour. By the time my term came to speak, I

that, Greene adjourned, and I swapped earthquake tales with the Bohemian Club survivors and listened to praises of the Hamadryads. I certainly did.

I haven't been able yet to get hold of Collier, and I have taken it for granted that I'm not working this week for him but for the American. That story about the Sun is running forth illogically and bubblingly. It is a great deal harder to do than you would imagine; and I struggle with it frightfully. I think that I am too close to it. However, there is a pretty rotten first draft on my table. You who have never written articles for magazines, only, bless heav'n, stories, cannot know how hard it is to start an article. I think always that if I can get through the first two paragraphs, I have it all. Also, I am trying to find the line between decency and indecency in speaking intimately of Clark and Lord. I have visited the Sun two or three times. Yesterday, I fell in with John Corbin, who is just finishing his term of office, and had quite a long talk with him about colleges in general. It appears that his first job out in the world is to write a college series for the Saturday Evening Post. As a great deal of it concerns a frank estimate of Harvard, I am forbidden by the rules of the game to tell you about it.

I should have liked to see you again, O lady of illumination, to hear how you thought about that party of the Queen's -- to talk it over. I was immensely interested in Chamberlain -- he is so typically the old journalist, whose youth is eternal but also somehow tragic. There is a whole body of tradition about that man. His drunks, which are of the world wandering variety, are historic. Sometimes, he goes out of business in New York and wakes up somewhere in Belgium or the Gold Coast. Whenever he disappears from the office, they wait and speculate and make bets on the corner of the world from which the

humble request for money will come. Wherever you go on the Pacific Coast, you hear tales of Chamberlain.

A kind of an obvious horror idea struck me yesterday as I was walking across MadisonSquare Garden. Did you ever hear of a ghost or spirit story in which the ghost of a murdered man meets the ghost of his hanged murderer on the other side? Your mind ought to put a twist on that!

And here is hoping that you are sleeping twenty hours a day and that you will arise and rip immortality out of your little Remington! You sure had an exciting visit to New York, and I imagine that after your round of festivities at the hands of friends who wouldn't leave a good girl be, you must be a frazzled and sleep-laden wreck!

Thursday afternoon.

I have been slack and remiss in this week of correspondence. The fact is that Hallie, having troubled insides, has been pretty sick all this sennight, and I have had to play nurse and investigator alternate. She thought she was well enough to go to a dinner at the Wilshire's last night. In the midst of the feast, I looked across the table at her. There she sat with her lips as white as this paper. I spoke to her and she got out of the room just in time to prevent skeel over. She has been in bed all this day, and can't keep anything on her tummy which bothers some. However, it isn't really serious, and California will straighten her out. There isn't a person on top of the ground who was less made to endure the conditions of New York.

As for myself, I have cut out that round of social gaities and gone on the water cart(really) and am getting ready to do nothing but eat, drink, sleep, live and die Collier's and the medium proposition. I don't care what happens to me after I do my first story on that medium business; but I must make good on that because on that depends my success or failure with Collier's -- and I must not fail there in sight of my brother. I shall toil with it night and day for the next three weeks or a month. I have already said with three test and trance mediums. The first told me that I made friends with the greatest difficulty; the second that I was in the wrong line of business -- she saw a counter and it come to her that she should tell me that I ought to take an inside job behind the counter --; and the third really told me truths that made my hair rise!

The American has accepted the Sun article, subject to a few changes.

There was something in your letter regarding your own work which made me think that I ought to answer nothing to all you said -- that you

didn't want an answer. And, in fact, I who am unworthy to loose your
literary shoe latch, haven't any right to say you yea or nay. But may
I express a belief, so firm that I believe in nothing more firmly in the
heavens above or the waters below or the waters under the earth?

And here's a story(for ) must go now and help Harriet and then
hurry to a seance. There is a bridge whist club here kept up by F.
Augustus Heinze, Charles Schwab, John W. Gates, and five or six other
great soprts who play for unlimited stakes. One day last month, a young
district attorney from Pittsburg, poor but rising, appeared in New York.
Schwab knew and liked him; invited him round to the club; the gam-
ew as started "Will you come in?" asked Schwab. "What are the stakes?"
"Twenty-five a point." "I can stand that." They played all night.
The District Attorney was a good bridge player; also he had the luck of
the damned that night. When he rose, they said: "We keep account here
and settle all winnings and losses by checks. You'll get your check
next week." It came, sure enough -- a check for forty thousand
dollars. Then he learned that they had been playing, not for twenty-
five cents a point, but for twenty-five dollars. He was in a terrible
quandary. Here, if he had lost that amount, he would have had to mortgage
his whole future to pay it off. He wrote to Schwab, stating that and
returning the check. "Dear Sir," wrote Schwa b, "If you had lost that
and refused to pay, we would have taken it out of your hide before we
got through with you." The district attorney took the forty thousand
after that.

I tried today to get that telephone book, and failed. I am
writing Rufus to tell him why; and also how he can get one for himself.

Just as soon as work and Hallie are off my hands, I have several
things touching the general good, things light, merry and entertaining,
to relate to you.

Tuesday, April 30, 1907.

If I ever cursed myself for laziness it is in these spring days(
not so very springy either) in which I am batting about on an article
which I ought to get out without a great deal of trouble, but which,
in fact, is perplexing me a great deal. I think that the year on
McClure's took a great deal of the working fibre out of me, softened
me some; and I am working now to get back to the good, lean, con-
dition of mind and body that blessed me when I was a Sun man.

I thought I would adore the adventure of this job. As a matter
of fact, it has been pretty slow. Things appear to be dull in the med-
ium line; I have had six or seven private sittings, and in none of them
have I got anything very humorous or very interesting. The greatest
fun has been watching them bat about for a lead. Do you know through
Frank the technical name of such a proceeding? It is called a "fishing
sitting". One greasy old woman told me that I was too cold in my
manner to get on with people; that it had ben my great trouble that I
couldn't make friends; that she saw before her a counter, which
meant that my talents weren't for traveling, and that I ought to get a
inside job. Thursday night, I am going to a developing sitting, which
ought to be interesting.

Will you be sore on me for something which I did in your behalf
this week? Munsey sent for me to say that he is getting out, emitting,
another magazine, which he has given to my friend Bannister Merwin to
play with. Merwin wants a lot of stories, and especially a serial
with an adventure interest. He wants it quick. What is the matter,
thought I, with June Jeopardy? Whereupon, knowing that he wanted
stories also, I said a few things to Merwin about you. Hard be

my bed if I exceeded my warrant! This is about what I said, as related on the Thomas W. Lawson method: "My friend Mrs. Gillmore, whose work I noticed on McClure's, has been making the mistake of sending her work through literary agents. You know as well as I do that to do that is a mistake except for the very well recognized authors, because the work that comes through agents is turned over to the first reader who is usually the dub of the office. (Merwin agreed to this, by the way). Now I have never been able to understand why such a good bunch of work as she is doing hasn't landed more, in fact, I account for it only on the agent theory. In especial, there is a serial of hers, June Jeapordy, which has a heap of merits, and adventure or rather romance to burn. I think that if you got some of her work into your own hands and read it yourself, you'd see what I mean." etc. He wants to see June Jeapordy, he wants to see a whole wad of your stuff. Now are you ever going to speak to me again, and if you aren't, will you see your friend Moyle by letter and ask him to send J. J. together with a wad of your copy to Bannister Merwin, Munsey's? And do not strike me dead for the suggestion!

Hallie is better; able to sit up a little today, though still yellow. The chee-ild started yesterday, a great deal too excited over the little and big choo-choo-boats on the river to mind that he was leaving his mother for three weeks. As she was parting from him, he asked in a matter of act tane, "is you going to cry mama?"

Hallie is pretty weak. Frank and I foregathered this morning, and I am to rip open the note books next week. When I think of the way I haven't bitten into this Collier story, I am ashamed to look myself in the face! I forgot to say that Munsey wanted me to do a serial story for the new magazine, plot and incident to be furnished by them,

Wednesday afternoon;

Harriet Sophia hit the pike for California on the one train. Most of the yellow faded out of Harriet Sophia while I was in Boston, and the affected area is confined largely to the whites of her eyes. She was arrayed in the new green dress which she had built upon the suggestion of your copper dress, and the new hat which is like Daisy's. In fact, she remarked in passing that she was a pirated edition of the Haynes sisters. The Queen dropped in to say her goodbye. Majesty paused to tell a tale. I take it back, though; the tale came from Bob Ritchie to Hallie. There was a certain man of family whose wife wanted him to take her to Jack's. He protested that it was a low place. She answered that that was what she wanted to go for -- to see that kind of life. In the end, he yielded. In the ladies' toilet of Jack's, the wife met a peroxided female who approached her smoking a cigarette, and said: "Say, kid, I want to give you a pointer about that lobster you caught there. Always get his money out of him first."

As punch would say, tableau. Further: While I was away in Boston, some of the bunch I trail with had a dinner. At that same dinner one Watson, a convivial illustrator, told this on himself and family (rather poor taste as far as the family goes, I think) He says that one night he went with his wife to a restaurant. He had been drinking; and the cocktail and the wine finished him. He was drunk. It was an injured jag. His wife stood it for some time, and then she said, "If you don't brace and act like a grown up man, I shall leave this place." He began to weep, whereupon, she got up and made good. He didn't follow because the jag at that moment took an indigested and prideful tone. Instead, he staid and filled it out. When he got home, he approached the door of the punitive chamber. Outside the door was a steamer

chair, with rugs and bedding, and a pair of pajamas. That was all.

Here, and today, I buckle down to get busy on the writing game.
I am about to start the Collier medium story, with that great mis-
giving which comes at such a time. Pray for me! Tonight, Frank has
his time with the book sellers. I can't go to it, because the girl on
the job has made an appointment with me to go to a seance with XXXXX

Dewitt Hough this evening. She got into Minnie Williams all
right. She is going to take me there on Sunday night, and I will see
whether the memory of Mrs Williams is good for faces. There seemed
nothing special about that Williams seance as described by my girl;
she did the same old tricks, although the introduction of Phoebe and
Alice Carey, who sang some of their dear old hymns, was pretty good.

I was greeted upon my return with the good news that Frank got
into the Players -- as he has probably informed you. Trying to be the
bearer of good news, I telephoned him to find that he had already
received news from his seconds. Also, here is a line from Life,
which might have been done by the family press agent!

This morning, I dopped in, while passing, to McClure's. I was
safe in doing this, for S. S. is in the West. He has taken Turner out
to Idaho, telling him that they will work up the Moyer Haywood trial
together. I fancy S. S. in the rowdy and joshing West, and I think
with a great admiration of the task which Turner has before him -- to
do that tale with S. S. hanging about his neck! I met the new partner,
Roberts, who is a man with a great deal of steel in him, and who,
with the hundred thousand dollar interest that he has in the firm,
should be able to club the old gent into shape. There I learned the
bad news that Viola Roseboro is down and out in the graces of the
whole McClure family, who consider her, the truest of her kind,

the villian and tool of Philipps. That wasn't the only intrigue which was poured in upon me. In fact, it seems that every person about there totters upon the verge of some gulf that S. S/ has dug for his feet. They're all tangled, all twisted, all balled up; and there is no health in any of them. One would say that the M. A. M. of Mary Baker C. had worked its worst upon them.

And now, undoubtedly pretty lady, shall I begin my struggles with the lost and the greasy. Thank heaven for the notes which I took on that last Sunday evening -- also for the notes of your eyes upon it. Now I am regretting that I didn't make you sit note book in hand and take down your thoughts and observations as they came to you. I'd rather have your eyes than a library!

Saturday afternoon.

We visited Ellis Island as per schedule, and to the great delight of G. Burgess, who had never been there before and who took the greatest joy in it. 'twas really a very good day, and I suppose by this time you have a wonderful letter from G. B. about it. The dumb, driven cattle this time were all dagoes, with a ship load, late in the afternoon, of Irish and Scotch -- a rare thing in these days when the Eastern European and the Italian is flooding things. The thing which still stick in my mind above all other things is a face I saw. She was a young Italian woman who sat upon a bale of luggage, and she was beautiful with a barbaric interpretation of the classic beauty which made G. B. whistle. I'll tell you how her face struck me. You know the hot-house blush which they make into bridal bouquets; open just far enough and not too far; tinted with a delicacy. That is the classic face. Then you know a great garden rose, full open. That was her face. There was a long, great curve to her ample nose; and her lips were barbarically full and colored so high that they were almost purple. There were the ox eyes of the classic, too; but they were great, wide eyes; too wide for a correct beauty. When I see a woman as fair as that, I always want to XXXX go up to her and tell her, in a perfectly platonic way, how beautiful she is.

There happened something funny which you may have already in the King James version. As we were threading the mazes of the piled and heaped baggage, there came to Frank an Italian woman, deep colored and shading about the mouth to gold. She was talking like a streak in Italian. We could none of understand; but her twinkling hands and glittering teeth spoke the language of gesture, universal and to be understood of

all men. She was hungry. She wasn't begging, though, for she pulled a
red bordered handkerchief and tried to show us money. We doped it at
last that she wanted something to eat, and was willing to pay for it.

Frank had on his person some bananas, of which more than one ter-
er her one, peeling her to show how it worked. A minute later, we saw her
feeding it in sections to her family; and then we knew that she was
hungry. So we started to find some lunch. Our way led us at last to
a counter where they were selling put up lunches at fifty cents a throw
a d eight languages on the outside thrown in. I bought one and bore it
to them. They tried to pay, but I waved them off. There ensued a cyc-
lone of gestures. She raised her hands in benediction. She clasped
them before high Heaven. Her family fell in; it was like a rag-time
Mass. Frank turned to a dago standing by and asked, "what is she saying?"
The dago, who spoke English, replied, "she say much obliged." Frank
had a hard time giving away bananas. Not one of the little kids would
take one -- well have they been taught to resist the advances of

delightful strangers. At last, he peeled one and managed to force
it on a little girl who was eating a hunk of bread. She ran her finger
nail across it (for she'd evidently never seen one before) and sucked the
goof from her fingers. It didn't seem right to her, and she laid it down.
"You'll be selling them in ten days," said Frank. On the way back, we
trailed behind a pair of the most-clinched lovers you ever saw. He was
a plain, peasant boy, just a mutt of a lad, and she was a plain peasant
girl, plain in every way. She dressed, nevertheless, in the hat. She
wore a pair of dirty white gloves. Waiting for the boat, he had as
much of her as he could get in one arm. With the disengaged hand, he
was holding her, and at regular intervals he placed a hard kiss on
the back of a glove. They walked onto the boat, still clinched.

He found a slightly dark corner as they sat down, and he delivered her a kiss that didn't seem to be in any hurry about stopping. "They'll be beating each other tomorrow night," said Frank.

Dinner at Cosgrave's in the evening. Hallie, still only conversant, shouldn't have gone. She has lost at least twenty picounds, and looks positively shriveled. However, she lived it through. Among those present, besides the Irwins and Cosgraves, were Geraldine Bonner, AL Thomas, and O'Malley, they two representing the majesty and brains of the Sun, best for tragedy and comedy. Geraldine, looking a little more plump than of old, has all her former poise and faded charm. That charm of a faded woman called forth independent remark from Thomas after the ladies had wit drawn -- for the Cosgraves, having a house not a flat, do the thing with formality. "She is like an autumn day," said Al. "Nothing in her summer was like it." I have never told you enough of that man Thomas. He is tall, dark, quite handsome, with a fine pair of black eyes and a straight, lithe figure. He has written a summer novel which failed because it was so artistic for a hammock, a bunch of good short stories, and some of the best newspaper stories anywhere -- and he is such a gentleman. Not Porter Garnett himself. understands so well all the delicacies of friendship. He has an easy ad **merry** tongue, which drops into seriousness with the talk about him, and a wonderful appreciation of the good points in people -- as you may get from his remark about Geraldine. I think that he is the best that I have found in Park Row, and I imagine that in the end we are going to have something like a real friendship. He is from Providence, the son of a clergyman, and he carries a Yankee tang in his drawl. He has the shrewd wit of the Yankee, too; when he wants to, he can be as caustic as Maude. O'Mally is that youth who has jumped

into fame on the Sun as the funniest they ever had. He is very young
yet, and is training a moustache -- so young that he is nervous socially
and asks questions about dinner calls. O'Malley has the true writere s
silence and speaks with difficulty, though he is a well-willed youth.
His young, rather prim, sandy, Irish face, the expression blanketed by
reserve and a great pair of eye-glasses, was a contrast across the table,
with the shifting, changing mobility of Thomas's face.

Mrs. Cosgrave offended me more than ever last night. How this
woman could be the firebrand among men beats me -- but it is always so.
I have figured out one of the most offensive things she does. She
must attract attention, hold centre stage; and as she can't do it by
legitimate charm, she does it by throwing out into the air strange,
wild statements and bromidically ridiculous statements. She is a
Canadian by birth, and she is always waving the Union Jack offensively
in the faces of us mere Americans -- I have heard her use the phrase
"How American." Her presence on earth affords me greatly.

It was rather a merry dinner. There was much good wit told and
quoted. One of the best that I remember was the remark of Alfred Henry
Lewis about John Adams Thaye r -- "He is a coal bin that thinks he is a
Saratoga trunk."

I'm coming to Boston on Monday. Whether I shall travel up on the
midnight or arrive in the afternoon, I don't know yet. Some time in
the course of the day, I'll telephone you from Young's, where I mustmake
headquarters, to find if you don't want to do a little of my chasing to
queer holes in the city with me. There will probably be some adven-
ture in it.

I find that I've only ten minutes to dress for a Stanford Alumni

Thursday, May 16, 1907.

A message via telephone arrived for me ten minutes after I mailed a letter to you yesterday. It was from Harry Anderson of the sun, he who got me the job to speak before the doctors. Would I meet him at the Fifth Avenue Hotel at half past five? I would. He looked slightly embarrassed and a great deal pained when I approached, and I saw that he came to apologize for some thing. In brief, he wanted to tell me that it was all off with my speaking before the doctors. It appears that Dr. Martin, who asked me to speak through Harry, had been called away to Washington. Being a careless cuss, as a newspaper doctor should be, he had neglected to leave word that he had arranged for speakers; and the Committee on arrangements had chosen their own speakers and printed the program when he got back. He had drawn straws

with Harry to see which should quell my wrath. When I writhed not but breathed deep relief, Harry was foolish with joy -- I think he though I was going to kill someone. I regret the hundred dollars which it would have brought, but I am relieved to think that I can work tonight.

In fact, I was confused between the two emotions for a minute, but sense of humor and the appreciation of newspaper irresponsibility got the better of covetousness, and Harry and I dined together. I have told you little about Harry Anderson. In describing a room, one is more likely to speak of the decorations and furniture than of the floor and walls; and so in telling of a place like the Sun, one tells of

the bed, which is Hill, and the chair of state, which is Boss Lord,
and omits such people as Anderson who represent the floors and walls
and who make the essential part of the room. This is a pretty
rotten simile, but take it for what it is worth. The point is that
there is little of the picturesque about Anderson, who is the youngest
editorial writer in the world(they say) but so much that is man! He

is short, fat, pink of complection, grave in speech, yet with a great
sense of humor; a little inclined to be cynical -- that for his youth
and his work on the editorial page of the Sun -- and being a newspaper
man, a delightful talker. There never lived a newspaper man who didn't
talk well. Reversing Bacon, they have conversation because they are
ready men.

And I here repeat the best thing he said through the evening; and
it was wholly unconscious -- it illustrates better than anything I ever
heard dropped the feeling of the Sun man for his paper.
He was speaking of Lindsay Denison's abilities, praising him and them
in the most extravagant manner. "Why," he said at the very climax, "There
have never been any twenty men on the Sun who had more native ability
than Denison?" I wish I could reel off the string of adjectives

which he got off about Lindsay. Something like this: "Dishonorable,
Quixotic, irritating, loveable, brilliant, foolish, lying, truth loving
true, false, wholly unaccountable pup that he is." We dined at the

City Club, met Miss Roseman, and both went to the Hough seance with her. There, Harry made one little slip which put the seance rather on the pork. They asked him if he wanted to examine behind the cabinet. "No thank you," he said, "I haven't the slightest doubt in the world." That was a little too excessive, that irony, and they caught it. So the best ghosts did not appear, and those which did came not far from the cabinet. There were three other men and two other women in the circle, and so far as we could see they were all in the game; the only money in the house came from us, I think. Next to Harry Anderson sat a very large woman, black-haired, eyed in splendor, and handsome-- until you began to criticise her figure. She had it in for Laura Conklin, Hough's partner and assistant. Before the lady came, the dark person did a little knocking, and all the way through she would throw in tiny jabs. It was her game to embarrass without giving the thing away, and I am as certain as can be that she was a rival medium there to study rival methods. I tried to get at her after the seance but she was cagey. Further than that I can tell you but little because --- shame that I must tell it --- I had one of my unaccountably sleepy evenings again, and they tell me that I disturbed the spirits twice by a morty snore.

I've forgotten to spin the day's events out in sequence. It was just after Anderson's telephone message that I got one from Mackenzie. Would I come over to the McClure office right away? I had been there earlier in the day. What did he want for? He couldn't tell me over the telephone, but it was very important. I found that they were just about to ratify the payment of John Philipps' money, and they wanted me as a director to ratify it and make it legal. Then I remembered that

when I left the place I didn't throw up my job of director! We voted

through the proposition to have Roberts, the new general manager,
buy John Philipps out. There at one stroke goes the old dishonor
which made me so sick while I was there -- for S. S. McClure never
intended to pay John Philipps and wouldn't have done it in this case if

the coming in of Roberts hadn't been to his own advantage. As is
usual when there is trouble coming, he got away West. They sat up
all night last night getting out the papers so that everything could be

signed up this morning -- they were afraid that at any moment the
uncertain McClure might telegraph them calling the whole deal off.
So, after all, the thing there will straighten out, and McClure, the
lucky, will not be allowed to butt his head into Hell. His situation
in life is the greatest reversal of ordinary luck that I know. Other

men are fighting to keep out of hell and the world is trying to
push them in. He is struggling to get into hell, and the world is
wrestling to keep him out -- and always when he is so near that his
eybrows get scorched, there rises a Philipps, a Roberts or an Irwin
to pull him back.

I drew some money out of the bank yesterday. On top of the pile was
a ten dollar bill. One the reverse side of it, in typewriting, there
is this:

"To T. M. C.
Merry Xmas 1905
and many more of
them"

Underneath that, in a business, clerkly hand, there is written:
"The best of friends must part. Auf Wiedersehen." Out of that,
you would have made ten tales already.

I tried and tried and made nothing of it!

Friday morning;

Frank has just telephoned that Hinton is dead. He is now writing an obit of him for the Sun. If it stands knee high to the obit he wrote for Fred Bullard, it will make the Sun stand up and root. It can-not, though, I suppose, because he is restricted therwhereas Tech let him loose to say what he pleased. I am sorry now that I did not know Hinton better, although I shall always remember the talk that I had with him over a restaurant table. This afternoon, I am making good on an old promise to take Miss Burgess and the girl who looks like Mayise to Ellis Island. I have associated with em some already, for yesterday we visited our old parish of Chinatown.

There were Ella Burgess, the girl who looks like Mayise, and whom I shall call Poore because that is something like the name as I remember it, Frank, and the calm and suave Pendenniss, with the glass in place. We fed of Chinese food, O hated nd indigestible stuff, and we saw an interesting play at the theatre We were wedged into a little, narrow box, more a margin than a space; and at Frank's end of the line was a Chinaman who kindly consented to translate. The story was sulphitic. The gods had sent down a god to stop a war and a woman to tempt and make soft the herat of a warrior. They sang alternate monologue for fifteen minutes to show that they were descending, and then, upon the scene shifters putting up a bed with curtains, they were supposed to have arrived in a place where the goddess and the god met. And thereupon the god fell in love with her, and forgot his mission. We are left to suppose that the tempting business was native to her, for she listened to him with languorous airs. But she didn't like him because he had an ugly, vermillion-painted face. Thereupon he waved his magic wand, and went behind the bed curtains. In full view if the audience, he walked

away from behind the curtains, and a beautiful youth -- he really was beautiful ever by our standards -- walked into his place. The supes opened the bed curtains, and there stood the beautiful youth. It meant

that the god had changed his form to that of the b. y. Then they courted for fifteen minutes in sing song. Frank, listening to the relation

of the Chinaman, turned to me and said: "here is where it gets untranslatable." It looks it when they closed the bed curtains on themselves. Then, Puff! and Bang! on the gongs, and enetr the head god.

The woman did a disappearing stunt, the beautiful youth sneaked, and when the supes opened the curtain there was the old, vermillion painted god with a look of disappointment on his face. The coming of the big god had changed his appearance back -- broken the enchantment.

The gods held a council. They distrusted him, and they determined to try him again, so they sent another woman. She landed him. Even the action gets untranslatable here.

They worked one of the best pantomime stunts I ever saw on the Chinese stage. There was a sub-plot about the stealing of an enchanted pair of Chinese gongs. You know those double gongs, shaped like a soup plate and of about the same size. well, they stuck together,

being enchanted; and presently enter the low comedian, who tried to force them apart. They stuck tight, but a mysterious voice from behind the scenery began to hold a dialogue with him. By what subtlety (is that right?) he did it I know not, but he managed to convey to us the fact that there was a man inside that gong and that it was he who did the speaking. By and by, the low comedian advanced to the front of the stage and showed that he was going to open them. At that,

a god crept in an hands and knees and crouched behind him. With a great effort, the low comedian pried the gongs apart, and spread them

out. The low com-dian rose up right between them, giving in a way
that would be hard to convey to you the impression that he had appeared
from the little space between them.

Frank told me that you told him that Daisy told you that Paul
told her that Carrington Phelps thought that Pendennis was inverted
in his morals. I match that with something that Lucia Chamberlain said
to me after talking an hour with Phelps --"The youngest point of view

I ever saw; did they try to teach him to think?" In fact, the worst
effect of the Wilde case on the world was its creation of a tendency to
think that of every man whose out-ward appearance is peculiar. That
of Pendennis -- never. I walked home with him. Frank has com-


mented on his poise, which makes him eminently safe socially. I have
mentioned his eyeglass, his hair and his skin, wh ch advertises him
socially. Beyond that, I find his great social quality in a power
rare at his age, of making other people talk. I found when I left him
that he had a jockied me into doing all the talking -- though that doesn't
take any hard riding with me. Frank is going to adventure on

Sunday night. I have a girl out chasing mediums and trying to
break in on Minnie Williams, who has the greatest graft of any medium
in this region. She has been going to that same little materializing
seance in which I wrote my last story for the Sun -- DeWitt Hough and
Mrs. Laura Conklin. The first time she went, she got no ghost. They
told her not to be discouraged but to come again; sometimes it was six
months before people got anyone of their dear ones. This week, she
had a test seance with Mrs. Conklin. The medium told her that her dead
mother, who was there, was a large and stout woman. Miss Roseman,
my assistant, allowed as it was true; though, as a matter of fact,

her mother was little and slim. there was also a brother John. She
never had a brother John, but she got a message, from him.

Miss Roseman
She also let drop the information that her own name was Ethel. That
night she went to another materializing séance, and a large and fat
ghost came out and asked for Ethel. Ethel went up and bespoke her.
It was as you suspect -- mother. Mother told her that John would
come next time.

After the séance, Ethel was bespoken by a young man who asked her
what she thought about it. Words led to acqáinence, and he informed
KXXXXXX her that he proposed on Sunday night to
grab ghosts and make an exposure if he could get anyone to stand by
him. I don't dare go to see the fun -- how I'd like to -- because
I've got further business to do with those people and the Hough outfit
must remember me after the Sun tale; but I passed it on to Frank, and
you bet he accepted. Miss Roseman is late out of Barnard, small,
meek looking, quite pretty, and carries traces of a New York mucker
accent with a university accent superimposed. She is all right
until she smiles, when her teeth show poorly. She has a slight cast in
one of her brown eyes, just enough to attract attention to them and to
leave that it pays to advertise. I don't know whether she is an old
enough bird to go up against a proposition like Minnis Williams, who is
a wonder of the world. I don't think that even Boston can show
anything better in the line of the false bug-farmer.

Seeing that I have a lot to do with mediums on Sunday, I have
taken today off, and this morning I have thrown the Sun story into its

collectable shape. It isn't so bad now, although one lags it down
with that old feeling -- o the things there which I feel and cannot
say -- o the heights that I see and cannot scale. I suppose that
this feeling belongs to all art from the highest to the lowest. I
suppose that Shakespeare and E. P. Roe felt it alike. Speaking
of which: you have heard, I think, this quotation from the speeches
of S. S. McClure: "I've asked Mclaren to write a snappy life of Christ."
This to match it. "Had a great day today, sitting up on the heights
over the Hudson and reading Shakespere and E. P. Roe." Going deeper
than jest, there is something of McClure's power of catholicity in that.

There is a story about wireless telegraphy in the current American.
It is a moderately good light story, but everything that deals with
wireless is so pathetically wrong as to show that he doesn't know the
first thing about it -- the whole situation, for a possibility, is
ridiculous. I shall be interested to find from John Philipps
how much they hear about it -- 'twill be a study in pigmilt.

To lunch, to Ellis Island, and to a tale of ghosts, which is that
baffling ghost story which wrung the old saying from Frank as I spoke
it off that night: "If you'd only tell it as you write it!"

Saturday May 18, 1907.

Upon my soul, I am glad to get back from that Publishers' blowout.
I return with some of the feeling of a man who has made a fool of him-
self. It revolved about the after meeting, over which I was persuaded
to preside. The meeting was a frost. Try as I could, I couldn't put
any ginger in it, and I went to bed beside Frank with a great disgust
which has held over and which prevents me from telling you the details
of the whole damn fizzle.

There wasn't very much of the joy of last year in the thing any-
way, and I enjoyed it only in spots. By the same token, I think
that Frank, who usually takes in having a good time, or even on-
joyed every minute except one after meeting. He also became
afraid of speaking up for what he thought was right, so he
says, is characteristic.

(The typewriter of me is one of the old things wherein the
ribbon has to be changed after every writing and I am always letting
it over run) However, there was that trip along the Hudson upon which
you and I proceeded once to West Point. As I remember that voyage,
the whole push talked mainly business -- I found it hard not to have
post mortems with McClure men. Then I traded dope with Frank, heard a
few good medium tales from James Ford, and sunned myself upon the
upper deck. That part of it was lazy, talkative, and pretty good.
The dinner proper was a stiff as ever, with a long list of dull speakers.
I was Lincoln Steffens officially, and quartered with Ray Baker. I
found, though, that he was going to the West that night, and so I got
Frank, who was in another hotel, to change over and stay with me. At
dinner, we managed to switch things so that Jack Cosgrave and Lindsay
Denison, Ambrose Bierce and XXV I sat together. Bierce is col red like

a cedar plank -- light mahogany color. He has snow white hair, hardly any wrinkles, and shrewd, twinklin & grey eyes. he is as handsome a veteran of the Civil War as one can meet. I have heard the most diverse tales of the character of this man, who, you know, is the most savage porfessional insulter that wields a pen. I found him delightful -- shrewd, kind and witty. He was much interested in the tales that

Lindsay and I poured into his ears, and had a boy's delight in the world.
At the after meeting, he sat until three o'clock just to hear the boys
jolly up. You, with your eye for human kindlinesses, your delight in
them, have often spoken of the pretty way in which women take care of
older women. But men have that in them too, at least the best of men,
and it was really five to see Cosgrave and Denison trying to entertain
this patriarch of letters. I loved it. The speeches were bromidic.
I couldn't stay them out, but retired to the bar and started the alleged
festivities.

Coming back in the morning, I met Richard Washbrn Child nursing a
grouch. Child has always seemed to me to be carrying a grouch. He has
a little of the you-be-damned air of Jimmy Hopper. However, we fell to-
gether, and Child uplifted and opened his soul. He said that this sort
of thing gave him a grouch always. He said that when it came to talking
to one man he was all right, but when there was a crowd present he
couldn't do it; they always seemed to confuse him and make him embarassed.
Said that the whole New York literary game was sickening to him, and he
would rather talk to cabmen any time. That fell rather in with my
sentiments at the time. He added that the writing game gets one far
from life. He is a Harvard Law School graduate. He is going on with the
law and going to write in his odd times. Then we fell upon Harvard.
He has the regular reverence for Harvard, and he attempted to explain
that Harvard was as democratic as Yale, and they were both as Democratic

as could be, because a man of merit, no matter where he came from, could
get into any of the societies. It never seemed to occur to him that
the societies were undemocratic in themselves. In fact, I haven't
found a Yale or Harvard man yet who could get my point of view on
the Eastern college societies and the democratic ideal. You put
it to them, and they stare.

Later, we were joined by Jim Barnes of Appeton's. He is an
old correspondent, a thirty-third degree newspaper man, with all the
attractiveness and the story telling quality that belongs to that kind.
He told one wonderful, if horrible story, about the South African War.
There is a historic case of a shot spy in that war, one Cordua, a captain
in the irregulars, who was caught by the secret Service plottinyg
against Lord Roberts. A according to Barnes, his conviction was a
piece of injustice. The British Secret Service, feeling that it had to
make good, had caught this man, tempted him, got him to make this plot,
and had then turned him over. There was no doubt that he plotted; there
was also no doubt that he was tempted into it. That fact was plain
to all the correppondents. The verdict of a British court martial is
never made public; but at six o'clock one morning, a captain whom he
he knew woke Barnes and told him that they were to shoot Cordua at eight
down by the cavalry paddock. He rushed over there. He found the
firing squad, looking pale, lined up; it was under command of a sergeant
named Palmer, who had held charge of Cordua all through the trial.
Presently, walking all alone and dressed in black, Cordua walked out
from a tent and started toward a group of officers. Then the eye of
Barnes lit upon an open grave and a common kitchen chair beside it.
Cordua, walking perfectly straight, approached the general and saluted.

"General, he said, "You may remember that never have I shown the slightest
sign of fear, have one thing to ask: Don't you?

I don't want you to blind my eyes or bind my hands." One of the officers asked, "Cordua, can we trust you?" He answered, "Absolutely." "Very well," said the General. Cordua turned and walked toward the chair. From the moment that Cordua spoke, Barnes said, his legs wete moving him backwards. His body seemed to have no control over them. They took him to the border of the enclosure, they carried him at a rapid walk down the road. he was by the fence of the cavalry paddock, when he heard the "br-r-r-r-r-" of a volley. About four seconds, and there came the pop of a pistol shot. He leaned over the fence and vomited, so that he couldn't eat for two days. That single shot did it -- he knew what that meant. Cordua had not died at the volley, and Palmer had been obliged to blow his brains out.

"And," said Barnes, "I have seen threeother military executions and been scarcely moved at all; but the imagination of that single shot quite upset me."

For an antidote, this was told by Child. There was a man in the Far West who took up some land and sent samples to the Department of Agriculture to find what the land would raise best. They recommended prunes and pumpkins. He tried pumpkins. They didn't do well. The blossoms would come out all right, but the fruit was sickly. He sent on to the department relating his experiences and asking what was the matter. They answered, "Better see about getting more male vines to fertilize the female." He answered; "I'll be damned if I'll be procurer to a lot of God damned pumpkins."

That Newberry who is at Scituate is undoubtedly Max, Perry's brother. He never had a great deal to do with Perry. I have known him through one divorce, one mistress, and the present wife, but not very well. That other important thing which came from Turner (it is now Sunday) I cannot remember.

I slept twelve hours last night, rose this morning to rip out a lot on that medium tale, which is very hard to write, as I go on to tell you another thing about that dinner. Have you ever heard of George Randolph Chester? He writes the stories about Skeezicks for the magazines, also other things -- a li terateur of the Jacques Futrelle class. In propria persona, he is inclined to be dirty and greasy. He comes to New York to harvest his gains, for he lives in Cincinnati, and he is a dinner grabber -- he hangs about the offices waiting for the pullers-in to take him to meals. Not a very pleasant personality. He came on for this dinner, and tuned up for it by a great jag. In the course thereof, he did several things. He hired a cab for all day, and, at the end of every hour, he stopped it to let the driver collect for that hour. He always demanded a receipt, of which he accumulated a whole pocket full. At the after meeting, he was pretty convincingly drunk. Nevertheless, he stood in the street at four thirty in the morning with two citizens of Albany who m he had collected, and woke everybody by calling aloud for Bill Irwin -- which tends to make me popular with the conservative publishers.

At nine in the morning, Gilman Hall and I found him in the bar still in his dress clothes, and entertaining the bartender and his two friends. He said that he wasn't going hom with us; he was going to cut us out and go West. Wall and I, realizing that he must at least change his clothes, got him to his room by telling him that he could get a drink ther. It was a jag like the Denison kind -- he didn't stagger, he didn't mouth his words, but he talked grandly. We got off his coat, his waistcoat, and his come-easy tie. Where he stuck. "No sir," said he, "I will not remove my trousers. To do so would take time that might be more profitably employed." We urged him to

take a cold bath. "At home," said he, "My wife makes me take a bath
every morning. This is an hour of recreation and ease, and I refuse."
He got to talking of the friends he had met. A fellow I met last
night -- maybe it was this morning -- anyway, the element of dates in
fiction is banal, and we'll say recently. A fellow I met recently."
I width that I could remember it all. In the end, Hall and I left him and
went our way. Somehow, he got dressed, and came back to town with us.
The last I saw of him, he was touching Boyden for the fare home.

On the whole, the gang that the publishers get together seems every
year to drift more to the advertising man. I don't think that I'll
want to go next time, and this occasion, you will be glad to know,
marks a departure in me from the yearning for conviviality.

By the way -- I have told Munsey that I will do that As You Like
It yarn.

And for the mediums and my fires again.

Monday May 20, 1907.

I have broken in on Minnie Williams. I sat with her in the circle last night, and received revelations. It was something of an adventure, and I fear that one little slip of mine gave it away, so that I cannot get in again. Let that be as it may, I have been through a good sitting with her, and as a connoisseur of mediums I give it out official that she is the best ever.

You would adore her, I know. She is as forceful as Mrs. Eddy, as grammatical as Mrs. Soule, and as shrewd as the Devil. Miss Roseman, too, has worked up quite an affection for her, and told me going home on the boat that she was sorry that duty required an expose. Minnie has felt her feed, and she wieghs at least 225.

Here, I can't tell you all that happened. That's written out of me, because I've just hurried to get it down on paper for Collier's. But here is the fashion of getting in. Miss Roseman and her invaluable step mother have been to four circles. That establishes them, and the spirit chemists, working in the cabinet, are already trying to manufacture a ghost for Ethel. Last night, she left her step-mother at home by agreement. At the door of the séance room, an old fashioned back parlor, we met the manager. We had timed ourselves to get in three minutes before eight, and three minutes before the séance began, because Dr. Cushman, the cabinet control, insists on promptness. We stepped into the circle, facing Minnie. She looked me over, and asked who I was. Miss Roseman explained that her mother was ill and couldn't come, and that this gentleman was her escort. Mrs. Williams wanted to know if I had ever attended before. "Not this one," said I with truth, "but many others." She looked a little doubtful, but swung

Acerbid glance toward the manager, who nodded slightly, and then she began her opening remarks. She made mention of the fact that those who came to her sittings doubting the blessed demonstrations of immortality never came again. After that, she went into the cabinet, and demonstrated immortality. We got our ghosts prompt and decive. There were thirty five in all. She works without confederates in the cabinet, and it is the best ever. Little Bright Eyes is a pretty good child voice, but DR. Cushman, with a deep, orotund, male bass, is the best imitation of the oter sex that I ever heard from man or woman.

Like all crooks, she could do better at straight work, and with those voices she could simply clean the vaudeville boards as a ventriloquist. Bright Eyes and Dr. Cushman had several flossy conversations. At one time, Bright Eyes started a conversation with me, which turned into something like a flirition, and was called d'own by the Doctor. It was in the course of that that Minnie scored on me. Bright Eyes said, "I see writing all about you. Do you write?" And I laughed, and trying, like a darn fool, to be natural, said that I did. I cussed myself a moment later; and I suppose that I won't get in again.

Every other person was a dope. They were mainly middle aged. They had a trusting child like faith in the whole thing, and one woman kissed and embraced six ghosts. One man had a long and weepy conversation with his spirit wife, and he told Miss Roseman afterwards that he had been coming for four years and this made the 324th time he had embraced her. They brought for a Grand Army veteran next to me the spirit of the man who died nest to him in Amdersonville, and they had an address by William xxxxxx Ellery Channing. Phoebe and Alice Carey also favored.

Being primed for Dr. Cushman, who is the envy of every medium in the business, I took notes on her voice and accent and inflection, it is

the Maine Yankee. So is Dr. Cushman's and so is that of Bright
This was the best seance I ever attended and I will give
her a certificate any time. Infact, she will receive her certificate
Godd willing, in Collier's, and we will then be sued for libel --
that is her specialty, but I find that the Collier people love the
festive libel suit.

Tonight, if I can, I must dodge an invitation to dine with the
new-made Mackenzies. I want to work, and I'm not in the mood to see
people -- hardly.

O. williams

Tuesday, May 21 1907/

To write all day, as I have done, leaves one dopey in the head; but at last I have finished the first medium article. It is a poor thing, as I look at it-- merely a description of a séance with a more ore less mythical Madame August and a real Minne Williams -- the two extremes of the graft shown at work. The introduction seems bad, and the whole thing dull, but I never finished anything in my life with a conviction that it was anything but rotten. By the time I am through, the faculty of self-criticism is dead in me. Now must I proceed to the next, which is hardest of all, for it is a try at telling the mysteriously delicate ways of the test and clairvoyant mediums. And today, along came the spirit robe from Leroy. I think he did me, for it can't be folded into the compass of a silver watch by a darn sight.

Frank dropped in on me at noon to take me to lunch at the Players where he is happily landed. We consorted with Vivian Burnett, and heard the little lord babble about the children's magazine. As Frank won't return to Boston until last week, we are going to have a final dope session, trading information about the craft. Speaking of Frank reminds me of Lucia, and that reminds me that when I dropped into Collier's yesterday they were all asking questions about Lucia. It appraisers that she came in with a story. They rejected the story, but they accepted her as a thirty-third degree beaut, and Arthur Ruhl protests that he has lost his heart.

Everything indicates, by the way, that they have dropped that Sunday magazine scheme. They haven't said a word about it to me; but the McClure syndicate people, who are of course rivals and have a

ad drawn up on the plans of their enemies, tell me that the Chicago Tribune, upon which Collier's depended for the backbone of the enterprise, has pulled out, and that it is going by the board. I am just as well satisfied on my own account, for if they'd carried this thing through the salary would have been atemptation to leave my writing to be an editor again. Something that they dropped in Collier's when I last drew my pay made me think that they intended to consider our arrangement as binding upon them until October; why they mentioned that, I don't know.

There's some wonderful spirit dope in the new books which I got this week from that Sylvester c concern. One of them tells about a marriage brought off between a middle aged male dope and a spirit principle whom they had been materializing for him at twenty-five dollars a material. They materialized Henry Ward Beecher to perform the ceremony. There was a Mrs. Ellon, operating in Australia, who used to materialize her ghosts in broad daylight before the cabinet, and let people take photographs of her standing beside the ghosts. All present, including the photographers, had to turn their backs, she giving the signal to snap the shutters, because the look of the human eye punched them full of holes. It gets past the imagination of man.

And tonight I am going to rewrite that ghost story of my own -- I am living with the people of the air!

Friday;

I worked today. I rose with a zeal to get up and do it, bucked down after breakfast, and now, at five, I have just risen myself for the first time -- except to pace the floor and work up to it again. And behold the first draft of the second medium article, which went a great deal better than the first article. I really get at it now, and I have hopes that the series, if not profound, will at least be readable. This second article, which treats of the pure "psychics" will be the handle; after I pass that, I get to the materializing and physical people, and the tales of the craft, which are easy because so obvious. But the attempt to show the delicate methods by which the "psychic" pumps out of you the information is a pretty hard bit of writing. There is a nice, healthy tone when one is through with a day like this; and you, who have been having perhaps too many of such days, cannot know how it strikes me, who have spent the last year foiling attempts of a crazy boss to keep me from working.

I went up to Yale yesterday -- and I'll be damned if I know whether I am going to make anything out of that story or not. The lads took it all so damned cheerfully; I think that they did their crying afterwards in their rooms. I chose to go all alone; which is the way to do a tale of that kind if you can, because thus you have to keep your attention on it, your eyes open -- there is nothing else to do. It was a great picture -- the green quadrangle, the stretch of the scholastic building to every side, the little glimpses of alluring corners, the great crowd of young boys in that attractive period of youth. The juniors stood in the centre of the group, bareheaded for distinction, and, as five o'clock approached, there was a tense silence.

First tap, you know, is given at the stroke of five upon the chapel door. I never knew such a long three minutes. There I was, in the centre of a great crowd--I had deliberately pushed to a place near the Juniors -- with the good, hard frames of athletic boys bolstering me on every side -- and there was not a sound. About two minutes before the clock exploded, three men in black cloths and derby hats -- the uniform of the tappers -- began to jostle through the crowd, saying not a word to any man but thrusting us aside with rough lustihood. We stood on tip-toe to see in what part of the crowd they stood; that was an indication of the first tap, since they tap just on the stroke. Then a wait so tense that I caught the contagion of many hopes, and my own heart beat and my breath choked. Then came the silvery little note of that bell. Three great slaps sounded over the crowd, and three voices said practically in chorus, "Go to Your room!" Immediately, cheering broke out from about the tapped; from all edges of the crowd, they were calling, "who is it?" the answers were shouted from side to side "Noyes to Bones," "Mitchell to Keys," and the like, and the cheers followed the announcements all down the line. The first three pushed through the crowd ahead of the their tappers, speaking to no man, and went as directed to their rooms. Later, they dropped back into the crowd to receive absolutely frantic congratulations. The group of Juniors near which I found myself was popular, evidently, and had hopes, for about half of them were taken before they finished, and the other left.
As man after man was tapped-- for three more men came back and did three more taps and do on to the end-- the survivors kept up their spirits by joshing, but their eyes were sad and between laughs they looked far away. It took an hour; off toward the end all the societies were full except Wolf's Head, which had two men still to tap; and the

survivors sand "We're here because we're here" to cheer themselves. At about six o'clock, Wolf's Head did its last tapping, and we all wandered away in a campus sunset. As a spectacle, it was a pretty sight. Youth is so beautiful. One man had the nerve, for which he was much ge-praised, to refuse a tap to Wolf's head, hoping, of course, that he would get Bones, which is considered the best of all. The praise was for his nerve in passing up the lesser good for the greater, not for anything else; and he lost out, as a matter of fact; because he was not tapped by the others. That was a peculiar moment. There came the sound of a slap not far away; but it was followed by no cheering and neither was there any movement. Tense silence for a moment, and then you heard them holwiring, "who threw what?" "Marshall throws Wolf's Head," came the answer, and a thousand tongues were loosed in discussion. I did not see any tears after it was over; the losers must have done their crying in their rooms. Somehow, it seems that the story in it has evaporated.

The day brought one of the forgotten joys of reporting.. there is nothing so good for my soul and mind as being all alone in a crowd. It used to happen often, of course, when I was a reporter, and it is one of the things that I have missed this last hard year. I feel always that my mind has taken a Turkish bath. perhaps that is why I have been able to write so readily and so rapidly today. And now I am going to dine with Rose, who stays over a night from Cos Cob for this; and to gossip over many things. Poor Rose says that she is all alone in McClure's now; I was the last link.

Even I could make a story, I think, of that O Henry-like episode about the rich person and the poor person at your civic meeting. It is