his saints, Bacon and Voltaire and Goethe and Tolstoy,
a babel of mighty voices. I don't want to drink up their
ideas and parrot those, though that would be better than
parroting bond salesmen and politicians, but I want their
minds to stimulate mine to efforts of its own. I want to put
myself in a position where I may spread my ideas and opinions
on things, not leave such a position. I don't scorn
journalism at its best. What matter whether your writing
goes between small covers or large sheets. You want to
reach other minds, that's all. Right now I don't care
two pins about getting writing done. I am going to develop
my mind and imagination, my self. To be is more important
than to do. It has got to come first. All I have in the
world is my identity. Broadly seen, I am a corpuscle in
the body of Man. Each of us is that, some stomach cells, some
arm cells, some brain cells. But even such an atom has
individuality. I have been subjected to influences, in
times before I was born and since, that are different
in their sum from the experiences of all other individuals.
That gives me a self. Now if I do not develop that self, if
I do not think for my self and feel for myself, I cease
to be anybody. Then I am no better than a stomach cell
and intelligence is no use. What good does it do then to
copy the ideas of Emerson or Shaw, or learn the maxims of
Thoreau, or foster sentiments like Whitman's? It is a sort
of self-suicide. Either way lies self-destruction in its
purest sense; not to think and feel individually, to drift
with the sluggish current of life, is death; to think exactly
as the past great have thought, to have no dynamos in your
own being, is death. I won't go either way. I may not

have any greatness in this self which I possess, but
I am going to give it all the exercise it needs for development
and then I am going to give it plenty of chance to work.
Money, friends, notoriety, luxury, all are less than dust to
me right now. To own things, even little things, diverts
the mind from its great gymnasium.

(Still you think that newspaper reporting as I have done it
is more honorable than developing oneself, than opening
the windows of the mind and rightx letting in the glory that
shines out of sight of most of us, than drudging away
and earning the contempt of all fat butchers, pork packers,
and wall street millionaires by striving to release the
divine but invisible energies to which the spirit may
earn access. Well in New York there are probably a thousand
reporters, 99 per cent numbskulls,

Some very clever
men who prostitute their wits. In common reckoning I
am perhaps one of a dozen. A few say I can outwrite them
all. But that is foolish, outwriting is only outthinking. )
I sat down to write an argumentative letter; but there's
no arguing about it. I am going to live my own way. Life is
like a gas meter, the kind you drop a quarter in for so
much gas. You drop 70 years in the slot and it's up to
you to say how the gas shall be burned. Some never touch
the match and all that happens is vile smells, sickness,
death and asphyxiation. Some burn it in a thousand places
so there is no visible illumination. I want to burn it
in one bright concentrated beam soaring out into the
blackness of existence.

There's no arguing about instincts. It takes courage
to turn down $5,200 a year, even for high-class poll-parroting,
and besides, fritter away the money you've laid by, merely
for the chance to pore over books and have time alone for
thought. In a perfect world the spirit will not be hobbled
by such obstacles. But I am going to do it. This is my
last day here. We call it a leave of absence. The doors are
not shut behind. They want me back, they will send me to
Paris, will do many fine things. The other men shake
hands and I suspect among themselves say I'm crazy; but
secretly they're envious of my doggedly going through
with what every ambitious mother's son of them would
love to do. It takes courage because there is so little
understanding of anything in the world but "human" motives.

November 3

Dear Father:

Your letter some days old but have been
unable, it seems, to pull myself to the
typewriter, now I have one. (Bought a rebuilt
Underwood at $72 and it is pleasure to use it)
Have not seen Robert; if I do not inside of a week
I shall mail your letter to him with a note
of explanation) Think you did well with the
property. Feared it would go into an insightfully
garage or office building or that at least some
one would pull down the old house. I like that
old house. Tearing it down would be for me
like cutting the nose off Wapak.

Things go well with me. But there have been
portentous days. The Post called me down one fine
day and made me such a fine offer that I could
have kicked myself with temper. For it was
an offer I could hardly refuse and yet I did not
want to take anything; I had laid my course for
the year and hated to be deflected from considered
designs. I like to hold fast to courses and not
veer like something flimsy. The proposal was this,
that I take over a column on *this* editorial
page and make it like the O O McIntyre stuff.
That I refused out of hand. McIntyre's gossip is
all swill and hogwash, copped from every corner,
of no intelligence or imagination or anything

worth while. They wanted the column wrought from
an older affair headed "Sought, Seen, Heard" and
run by Raymond Carroll who is now in Paris for
the paper - there for good. But I thought things
over and then suggested that it have a different
title and be a daily sketch of New York, some
eccentricity, some interesting feature, some
revelation of this great sprawling hive of six millions
(All the time they calculated I could carry this
along with my studies in Greek, etc., and that
it would take "only two hours a day", for which
they offered my old pay, $75 a week.) But I
knew if I took it I would give it all the time I
could muster. However the money figure stood.
The deal was more or less closed. Presumably I
start in a week or so. Shall have to compress
my studies into the mornings and give afternoons
and nights to the column. It is really a great
chance, a reporter's paradise. Divorce from the
city room, emancipation from the city desk and
copy desk and assignment book. I shall have a free
hand. I shall have, on the surface at least, to
avoid controversial things and matters of comment.
There are thousands of things that are taboo - one
grasps this subconsciously and shifts his values
for each newspaper owner and publisher. But it
will test my skill in trying to say the things I
want to say without saying them right out. One should
be able to make his material speak for him in a
hidden voice, to give the top and color of things

seen and heard and fancied, and yet make clear
to readers the invisible bottom luster and
significance. If they'll really give me a free
hand I ought to make something important out
of it. It is something I never dramed of
getting five years ago - the task of interpreting
the city's dark heart, of giving a voice to
inarticulate people, of making the hurried and the
unseeing see and feel the throbbing mysteries
around them, of which perhspas one-millionth part
are uncovered for me, but that millionth more
than the average sees. That is a worthy job, it
seems to me, to make the blind see and the deaf
hear. I begin to realize that you may be set
down anywhere in the world, in the universe,
in a city or the woods or beside a manure pile,
and the mysteries within ten feet of you are
enough to occupy you for an immortal lifetime.
The wonder of things flakes off in little bits
for those who try to think and feel them, like
sparkles flying from a hammered horseshoe; each
point of new light is brilliant and exciting, and yet
it is an insignificant part of the whole thing.
If I can but catch these flakes of fire and give
them some permananence, to hold them alight for
a moment for others to see, that will be doing
my job. I don't expect to succeed at first. Will
have to work like thunder to get hold of my own
visions. They go on the wing and there is no time
to put salt on their tails, you must shoot.

There will be no lack of readers. The column
also goes in the Philadelphia Ledger, with
a quarter million readers, the Post here, and
*xx* syndicated will be syndicated to more and more
western papers. It is not impossible in these
days of syndication to have ultimately ten or
twenty million readers. But now I don't care
about readers: I am concerned with the writer.

So much for that.

I have been getting rest, though busy all the
while. Chicago did not wear me out so much as
New York afterwards. There was the Prince; then
I came up from Long Island with an infected jaw,
from a barbershop, and have to have that lanced
every other day for over a week. Looked pretty
serious for a space, but the doctor was a rough
fellow with the lance and carbolic acid on
swabs, and now nothing remains but a slight scar.
Then I did a twenty-thousand word biography
of Pershing which kept me going night and day -
three or four thousand words a day, and having to
hunt out all my material from old newspaper files
and the history library. Sorry Haven't got a set
of the papers for you; laid them by and lost them
when I moved.

It appears your property deals made you come
about even. Now that I'm not going to be dependent
on my savings, I have a thousand dollars I don't
need. Have you any use for it? It lies in the savings
bank and does me no good. Just as soon give it you.

Love to all.

TELEPHONE WHITEHALL 9000

20-24 VESEY STREET. NEW YORK, N. Y.

New York Evening Post
FOUNDED 1801

January 3 1925

Dear Father:

Just a note to accompany this enclosure,
which I send to you to show the kindliness
and thoughtfulness of a friend like Christopher
Morley and also how close I have come to
winning the Pulitzer prize in journalism - a
yearly award of $1,000 and distinction of
much more value, if one values distinction at
all. Rollo Ogden is editor of the Times and a
fine gentleman whom I know only by his writings.
There are a number of judges, however, and I
understand from another source that I shall
probably not win the prize because last year
it went to the writer of a story in California
on the eclipse of the sun, viewed from an
airplane, and the repetition would give
the impression that the judges are partial
to this type of reporting, whereas it should

be general. The PRI ZE goes to the best
story of the year, country wide, so the
winner tops journalists not only of NY and
Chicago, but of all cities in the country
at one swoop.

I am well. Xmas box was dandy and
nothing remains but a few nuts and a stick
of candy. My love to all. Trust Ned and
I's bairns got the trifles I sent.

January 27 19

Dear Father:

Only a note to acknowledge yesterday's
letter. I shall send some better pictures of
Esta later on when we have some taken. You need
have no fear of my acting headlong or thoughtlessly.
We are both people of commonsense, Esta and
II, and will prudently defer marriage until
reassured of the future. But I cannot take
the common view of marriage. I could not marry
a merely pretty girl, inexperienced and lacking
a cultivated intellect. I want the association
of a brave and independent spirit and a luminous
intelligence. Beauty seems a perquisite. I find
to my surprise that I am a good deal of an
anarchist at heart. The marriage ceremony means
little or nothing, except that in a society
whose cornerstone is marriage, children and
contact with that society make marriage
requisite or nearly so. It would need much
fortitude and stalwartness to stand out against
it. Loyalty, fidelity, chastity in the higher
sense - those are important. But to most people
wedlock is only society's leave to cohabitate,
and the marriage certificate a man-made license

of concupiscense.

But it is a dangerous - or a valiant - thing
to oppose society. Brick walls are harder than heads.

About the eclipse - here are clippings of
some of the work I did. My misfortune was that I
had to stay in the office and "re-write" - that is,
write the lead story from telephone reports sent in
by a whole troop of reporters stationed throughout
the shadow belt. It was using other eyes. At 8:30
I dropped my work and went up to the Woolworth
Tower - 792 feet - for a squint. Great! Then back
to my last like a good cobbler. Afraid you had
no good visibility. But no one saw it through
a telescope. Every observatory in the zone had
cameras hitched to their telescopes. Even
astronomers used the naked eye.

Very well.

Dudley Nichols

New York Evening Post

20 VESEY STREET
NEW YORK, N.Y.

Dr. G. B. Nichols,
Wapakoneta,
OHIO.

March 7

Dear Father:

Robert has telephoned, saying you
asked for my home address, planning to
send some syrup. The number is 242 West
Tenth, as before, but I am more skeptical
of receipt, now that the house has changed
janitors. At Xmas time I had the janitress
look out for the box. The Post address
is best.

My fear is that my appreciation of
syrup will not justify the trouble. You
see, I never eat at home, always at restaurants
or hotels, and syrup is a complementary
thing, always best with something else.
I know I should enjoy most a few pieces
of maple taffy or sugar, something in portable
form. I don't mean to be choosey about this,
for the Lord knows my mouth waters at the
thought of Ohio maple syrup, but it is best
to be plain spoken. I don't like to think
of your taking the trouble to crate a
full can which is an excessive amount.

Spring is just outside my window to-day.
Even St. Paul's graveyard looks chirky. I
keep pretty busy. Sending you separately a

couple of papers. Wish I could walk out along
the Auglaize this afternoon. I feel tired, very
tired. Probably a two mile walk home to Tenth
street will enliven me, L trains whooping
overhead, gamins in the gutters, trucks lurching
over the cobblestones, and Wops and Bohunks and
Polacks taking a Saturday afternoon strut in
the Parks.

How are Ned and Kitty? And Lucile and
her brood? My love to all.

If not delivered in 5 days return to
Dudley Nichols

63 PARK ROW
NEW YORK, N. Y.

Dr G B Nichols
Wapakoneta
OHIO

The World.

New York

Editorial Rooms.

Feb 10 1927

Dear father:

I'm getting almost as bad as John about writing.

So much to do and so little time. Esta and I are hoping to be able to take three months and go to England and France this summer. Not settled yet. She has a new maestro now and is going ahead rapidly with her voice. Besides she is studying German, having mastered French, Spanish and Italian. I'm able to help her a bit with the German and thereby brush it up myself. I expect 1811 take up French again, or hope to be able; I've had time for absolutely nothing but work this past winter. In the spare time we get out to the opera and theatre, and there's some reading must be done. (By the way, I remember your telling me of reading in Thoreau's journal about his meeting with Whitman. If you know the passage would you tell me where it is, or have Ned copy it out for me on the typewriter? I'd like to have it.) And do you remember Thoreau mentioning RWE and saying somewhere their ideas clashed somewhat. I seem to remember something of the kind. A great man, Emerson. . .Yesterday I was over in Edison's laboratory in West Range. I'm going back again this afternoon and will probably see Henry Ford. To-morrow I interview Edison. I'm galloping off now for my train, so don't mind the inconsecutive gallop of this

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INCORPORATED

NEWCOMB CARLTON, PRESIDENT

CLASSES OF SERVICE

TELEGRAMS

NIGHT MESSAGES

Night Messages may at the option of the Telegraph Company be mailed at destination to the addressees, and the Company shall be deemed to have discharged its obligation in such cases with respect to delivery by mailing such Night Messages at destination, postage prepaid.

DAY LETTERS

NIGHT LETTERS

A. Night Letters may at the option of the Telegraph Company be mailed at destination to the addressees, and the Company shall be deemed to have discharged its obligation in such cases with respect to delivery by mailing such Night Letters at destination, postage prepaid.

Thursday P.M.

Dear Father:

Here are the columns I have done so far.
Now nearing the end of the second week. I do
not like the heading and I do not like the
masquerade signature, but what is one to do?
Was on the verge of throwing the whole thing
up to-day. Begin to realize that I cannot
work for Mr Curtis. These people are about
as dissatisfied with me, I guess, as I with
them. I am not blind to my own talent and I
know this work is of extra quality and as good
as any being done in American journalism
to-day. The Curtis crowd has no ear for the
deeper vibrations of life and no patience
for the man who eats his heart out trying to
catch those vibrations. Old Man McCloy who
makes up the editorial page in New York likes
my stuff fine. He has been a figure in New
York journalism these fifty years. "Over their
heads", he growls in his moustache when he
whispers encouragement. Suggests my doing a set
of twenty-four papers, for subsequent book
publication, with the title: Twice Around the Clock,
in New York. Each hour of the day and night
life focuses at a different point, and each

THURSDAY

Dear Father:

The box of candy came to-day and I could not wait till I had undone the string and chewed up a piece. There was more of spring and woods and bluebirds and outdoors in that one mouthful than in all the days we've had in the city this year. My Harvard writings are done but I keep busy with other things. Did I tell you I was taking Italian lessons now? What with them three evenings a week, and so many other things, I seem to have no time to myself.

I'm taking the box of candy now, tell Kitty, to Esta's, and she shall have her first taste of Ohio maple sugar.

With love,

Saturday Decl

Dear Father!

I thought to have written at length
before this. There has not been time. Now I shall
give you a few lines, and defer again discussion of
more lengthy matters. I presume you got the note I
wrote from the hills in Massachusetts, sitting up
with stiff fingers for a short time one eveing, when
I was so cramped and tired I could hardly write
readably. It was a jolly excursion, although my
subsequent shooting at the partridges was not so
admirable as that first shot led me to hope for.
They are very fast birds and wild, rocketing out
through the thickets of gray birches far ahead of one.
Most of it was snap shooting, but now and then
ore flushed a bird close and got a good shot. Well,
I brought back one brace of birds, and Meland and I had
them roasted at the Williams Club, a fudgy meal for
each, I'll tell you. I shot a rabbit, and also a hare,
the latter almost all white and looking as big on
the ground as a young deer. That is stretching it some,
but for a actual size, I should say it was twice the
length of a wild rabbit. When I held its legs, standing
straight, its ears flapped the ground. And what things
they are to run. Very nearly, too, I got a poke at a fax.
We had hunted through a mile or so of timber and come out
upon a rolling farmstead, and Simpson started for the house
to get a drink. I sat on a bald ledge of rock at the woodedge, waiting.

2

Presently my mouth felt dry, and I picked up my gun and started for the house. No sooner had I reached the door than I heard a great yapping and singing, and looking back saw a beagle and some kind of cur hot on the heels of a fox, the little beagle putting up as pretty a baying as you could wish and the fox taking it easy and putting them behind. Right past that bald rock they went in full cry. I should have had a thirty yard shot had I sat still. It is just as well, I think now, but at the moment the heat of the hunter was in me and I felt chagrin.

It was a right pretty country, giving one an overpowering sensation of the beauty and breadth of the world, which is something one lapses into forgetfulness of in cities. There is nothing like hills and mountains - nothing unless it is level Ohio woods in the crisp yellow fall with hickory nuts dropping and ripe pawpaws overhead and redsquirrels whistling. Or the spring woods in early May with its warm wet smells and mushrooms creeping through the leaves.

Here it is December 1, the year nearly gone round again, and I am not so well satisfied with myself. I spend too much time merely in making my bread. My French and Latin classes occupy most of my spare time, and I can do little reading or thinking. When we are hustled and busied with trifles (and most news is tifling) the mind is ruffled, like water, and no longer reflects the fine colors and outlines of the world. The atmosphere of newspaper offices is smoky and puts out our inner lamps. I spend all my time rubbing my own lamp bright, or all the time that is given me.

3

There is so much to learn, so much to read, so much to think, so much to do, and so little time for it all.
There's not a moment to waste. Well, I suppose I am like the baby crying for the moon.

But I know I am a complete world in myself, and things exterior to that world, physical be longings, can mean no more to me than Aldebaran to the Sun. I feel myself a world orbiting about the universe, and more and more existence seems revealed to me as a spot of time, a period of exploration of the relations between these two magnificent worlds, an exploring cruise wonderful beyond dreams and happy for all its pain. It is hard to talk about these things without seeming a bit gassy. But one is always indulgent with oneself, and therein lies the charm of solitude, and one can by reflection soar up to the regions where ideas swish by like meteors, and grab at their fiery tails, and perhaps get his hands burnt. I'm not doubting but that high region may in reality be quite commonplace or non-existent. I am interested less and less in the realities of literal minds. Then there is the passion to do, which is overmastering and will not let one sleep. Minds of any superiority what soever must make. That is why some turn to money. If they miss, and most do, they have missed everything, the deep contentment that lies even in passive appreciation of art and philosophy and everything that environs the cultured mind, however wretched its receptacle. If they succeed, they have all money can buy, and there is only pleasure, not happiness, in its possession.

5

do good work before I'm done, work distinguished in the
minds of those who count.

Well, to say truth things are not so bad.
I'll peg along here till my classes are completed, and then
try to take a year to myself here or in Paris. Paris I have
been set on, for it would be fine rounding out of my speech,
but then New York is enticing. There is nowhere in which
you can be more utterly alone. Here is a magnificent library.
Plenty of misery and beauty and cruelty and vital life to
stimulate the mind to creation. I can't imagine anything
finer than a year to oneself here, just to read and write and
search out your thoughts.

In retrospect this letter seems pretty
blue, and if that is its effect I hope you will not
take that for my settled color. There is plenty to be
gay about. After all, I am getting on. And I find more
and more strength of will to be true to my best aspirations.
I am convinced that all people have high hopes and
aspirations, but most lack the courage and constancy to
be true to those sentiments, which fade away after only
a little ignoring. I should never be content now with
material plenty, home, family, three meals a day and the
respect of the community. Once you feed the spirit's hunger, it
puts the belly to shame. Through the eyes of men who have
talked to me from books, and from the book that resides in us
all, I have seen the invisible wide lands, and there is no
returning to the noisy places of crowded men.

6

I know I am not normal, that is to say,
not as common men, although it may be for the worse.
It estranges me from them. Not to any of my friends,
excepting Morley, can I talk. For others I am engulfed,
and when I talk it is not I but some other else. I make
up a character and that character converses with them.
My true self is shy. With Morley it talks. Now and then
I interview some man, usually a writer, with whom I seem
to chime in every key. It is a great experience. The
relief appears is to write, for that is talking to
your own self. All writing is the record of a dialogue,
the active agent being yourself and the passive agent
yourself. All this is pretty crudely stated. I don't mean
to imply I am a superior person. There are thousands
of men whom I could be friends with, but I don't know
them. But even if I were a great mind in potentio, that
would not argue that I should be on a friendly footing
with all other minds of equal stature and possibility.
All mind is great. But the spirit or exalted personality
that is the actual ego of each of us (and which varies in
stature and beauty far more than the bodies of men) is always
lonely. It feels its own exclusiveness.

I'm afraid this is a pretty windy letter. No
news. I don't seem able to put news into a letter. Well, I'm
sick of using all my dear words to write it. First thing
you know, the words get dull and common and full of nicks.
And you find yourself using a razor to chop a joist, so to
speak. But as for my material comfort, I am very well indeed,
and hope this wandering letter finds you all in no poorer state.

Cedley.