[The following is addressed from Manasquan to a boy, the son of the
writer's friend, the sculptor St. Gaudens; for the rest, it explains
itself.]
MANASQUAN, NEW JERSEY,
27th May, 1888.
DEAR HOMER ST. GAUDENS,—Your father has brought you this day
to see me, and he tells me it is his hope he may remember
the occasion. I am going to do what I can to carry out his
wish; and it may amuse you, years after, to see this little
scrap of paper and to read what I write. I must begin by
testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in
the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed
a single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this I
thought an excellent and admirable point in your character.
You were also (I use the past tense, with a view to the time
when you shall read, rather than to that when I am writing)
a very pretty boy, and (to my European views) startlingly
self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that
you must pardon me if I can say no more: what else I marked,
what restlessness of foot and hand, what graceful clumsiness,
what experimental designs upon the furniture, was but the
common inheritance of human youth. But you may perhaps like
to know that the lean flushed man in bed, who interested
you so little, was in a state of mind extremely mingled and
unpleasant: harassed with work which he thought he was not
doing well, troubled with difficulties to which you will in
time succeed, and yet looking forward to no less a matter than
a voyage to the South Seas and the visitation of savage and
of desert islands.—Your father's friend,