I have been waiting for a full hour of leisure to write you a letter,
but I shall never get it, and so I'll write you anyhow. Come to think
of it, there is nothing to say--nothing that _needs_ be said, rather,
for there is always so much that one would like to say to you, best
and most patient of _sayees_.
I'm sending you and your father copies of my book. Not that I think
you (either of you) will care for that sort of thing, but merely
because your father is my co-sinner in making the book, and you in
sitting by and diverting my mind from the proof-sheets of a part of
it. Your part, therefore, in the work is the typographical errors. So
you are in literature in spite of yourself.
I appreciate what you write of my girl. She is the best of girls to
me, but God knoweth I'm not a proper person to direct her way of life.
However, it will not be for long. A dear friend of mine--the widow of
another dear friend--in London wants her, and means to come out here
next spring and try to persuade me to let her have her--for a time at
least. It is likely that I shall. My friend is wealthy, childless and
devoted to both my children. I wish that in the meantime she (the
girl) could have the advantage of association with _you_.
Please say to your father that I have his verses, which I promise
myself pleasure in reading.
_You_ appear to have given up your ambition to "write things." I'm
sorry, for "lots" of reasons--not the least being the selfish one that
I fear I shall be deprived of a reason for writing you long dull
letters. Won't you _play_ at writing things?
My (and Danziger's) book, "The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter," is to
be out next month. The Publisher--I like to write it with a reverent
capital letter--is unprofessional enough to tell me that he regards it
as the very best piece of English composition that he ever saw, and he
means to make the world know it. Now let the great English classics
hide their diminished heads and pale their ineffectual fires!
So you begin to suspect that books do not give you the truth of life
and character. Well, that suspicion is the beginning of wisdom, and,
so far as it goes, a preliminary qualification for writing--books. Men
and women are certainly not what books represent them to be, nor what
_they_ represent--and sometimes believe--themselves to be. They are
better, they are worse, and far more interesting.
With best regards to all your people, and in the hope that we may
frequently hear from you, I am very sincerely your friend,