This is just a hasty note to acknowledge receipt of your letter and
the poems. I hope to reach those pretty soon and give them the
attention which I am sure they will prove to merit--which I cannot do
now. By the way, I wonder why most of you youngsters so persistently
tackle the sonnet. For the same reason, I suppose, that a fellow
always wants to make his first appearance on the stage in the role of
"Hamlet." It is just the holy cheek of you.
Yes, Leigh prospers fairly well, and I--well, I don't know if it is
prosperity; it is a pretty good time.
I suppose I shall have to write to that old scoundrel Grizzly,[1] to
give him my new address, though I supposed he had it; and the old one
would do, anyhow. Now that his cub has returned he probably doesn't
care for the other plantigrades of his kind.
[1] Albert Bierce.
Thank you for telling me so much about some of our companions and
companionesses of the long ago. I fear that not all my heart was in my
baggage when I came over here. There's a bit of it, for example, out
there by that little lake in the hills.
So I may have a photograph of one of your pretty sisters. Why, of
course I want it--I want the entire five of them; their pictures, I
mean. If you had been a nice fellow you would have let me know them
long ago. And how about that other pretty girl, your infinitely better
half? You might sneak into the envelope a little portrait of _her_,
lest I forget, lest I forget. But I've not yet forgotten.
The new century's best blessings to the both o' you.