Your letter of Nov. 28 has just come to my breakfast table. It is the
better part of the repast.
* * * * *
No, my dictionary will not sell. I so assured the publishers.
I lunched with Neale the other day--he comes down here once a month.
His magazine (I think he is to call it "The Southerner," or something
like that) will not get out this month, as he expected it to. And for
an ominous reason: He had relied largely on Southern writers, and
finds that they can't write! He assures me that it _will_ appear this
winter and asked me not to withdraw your poem and my remarks on it
unless you asked it. So I did not.
* * * * *
In your character of bookseller carrying a stock of my books you have
a new interest. May Heaven promote you to publisher!
Thank you for the Moody books--which I'll return soon. "The Masque of
Judgment" has some great work in its final pages--quite as great as
anything in Faust. The passages that you marked are good too, but some
of them barely miss being entirely satisfying. It would trouble you to
find many such passages in the other book, which is, moreover, not
distinguished for clarity. I found myself frequently prompted to ask
the author: "What the devil are you driving at?"
I'm going to finish this letter at home where there is less talk of
the relative military strength of Japan and San Francisco and the
latter power's newest and most grievous affliction, Teddy Roosevelt.