Mr. Max Ewing,
Pioneer, Ohio.

Dear Max:

I would have written you long long ago but I just got time
to go down and get the paper to do it on. Also I've been waiting to
learn a few things that I must know to answer you. So---

I can't possibly come to Clear Lake Labor Day week-end altho
it is an ideal time. A few of us here have been planning for some
time to go out of town for Sat. evening, Sunday and Monday. So that's
that; I'm sorry. Now---

As I am working, you know, I have to be sort of cautious the
way I take time off. There are several of us who are going to take
vacations and we have to dove-tail. But---

I've gotten permission to have a few days **before** the Labor
Day week-end, as you suggested. I can get off Wednesday or Thursday
Aug. 29 or 30, and can be off until I have to be back here sometime
late Saturday afternoon. I'm sorry I couldn't come when you said. Now
please, for the love of Pete, if that time isn't perfectly convenient
let me know and I will try to get sometime else off.

If I do come how do I do it? Do I take the Ann Arbor R. R.,
to Toledo and come out to Pioneer by the electric?

Yes, I would like to meet Frank. What made you think I
wouldn't?

I feel for you in your indecision. But I don't feel very
bad for you. Now look at me! I have about a month to choose what
my future life will be. Shall I go into Law? (which I have been think-
ing of), but think of that tortuous, uninteresting grind; shall I be
a social worker? but there is no money in that and I must have money;
shall I write--be a free-lancer, and never have a square meal in my
stomach? While you--you have the world to choose from. Which ever
you do you can't go wrong. When reading your letter I have no feeling
of indecision, uneasiness, uncertainty, but rather of the inevitableness
of you---you can't go wrong. Of course, Peter, I realize that you may
have those disquieting feelings, but you are having the best time of

your life, child. Thus I am comforted too.

But this begins to sound too much like Sigmund. Yes, I have
finished my novel. Lawrence has read it and assures me that it will
be published and have quite a sale. Let's hope for the best. Would
it be the best though? You know if, in gambling, you win the first
stake you are sure to try for the next one and, in the end, be
broke.

But I should worry!

Do you know I was dee-lighted when I heard that you had decided
that music was your place. I knew that all of the time, of course.
Such things as writing etc., are interesting to you, of course; but
without a doubt music was your specialty. I was afraid for a time
that writing, if not entirely divorcing you from your music would, at
least, dilute the richness of your music it. For if there is so much
feeling in a container the fewer holes for it to come from, the
greater will be its intensity and fertility. That's why I'm afraid
that to write and practice law I would be a failure in both while,
perhaps, in one of the two I could do something. But that, also,
remains to be seen.

You'd better write me soon and give me some information. And
that's all.

'Sever,

I'd like to have you read
the rest of my novel if you have
time — but if you course I would
suggest it when you do first.

230 East 48th Street.

Nov. 22, 1933.

Dear Max:

After having been forwarded all over the place your letter is finally here -- at 230 East 48th Street -- where we have an apartment, all white, and cromium and walnut -- very nice for us. We stayed until in Vermont until the last gasp, Florence even staying two weeks after that, getting back here in Nov. And we'll probably stay the season here now although maybe not. My show goes on the first of the year. Had fourteen offers for it from producers and three independent backers offered to put up the money. Out of these, oddly enough, I chose Wiman, who is the most fun to work with. Auriol Lee has arrived from London to direct it. All of this because if you have a play ready to sell why don't you send it to me?

I guess Morrison is a good agent, I think. Briscoe even better probably. Any agent will soak you a percentage, of course, which you will doubtless have to pay later anyway, though, because you'll want someone to handle it for you. But as for the selling of it I think I could help. If not I could always hand it over to an agent for you.

For what your play would be of course I think Wiman would be good. There's something about his appreciation of certain types of scripts that no other producer has. And he's a close friend of Claire's.

I make one reservation. If the script, I think, isn't so hot I'll give it to an agent at once which is where it would be anyway if you sent it direct. It's very easy for me to get plays read now, and more quickly than an agent can, for the simple reason that I've never given a producer a play to read that wasn't good. If I started doing it they'd never read a play I recommended. Hence the reservation. But if you like I'd be glad to read it and if I liked it give it to Wiman. Then Jed, maybe. Then Potter and Haight. etc.

Claire, I think, is on the road with Biography, for six weeks more. thinks she's under contract with the Guild, which doesn't mean, if they haven't a new play for her, that they wouldn't be glad to loan her out. Will ask Wiman. -- It's getting late to have a production this season for a play not yet read.

Give my best to Warren William, or Mary Boland or Allan Vincent if you see them. They're the only ones I know out there. Will let Florence write you details of cats etc.

Best,