_Manasquan_, _New Jersey_, 27_th_ _May_ 1888.
DEAR HOMER ST. GAUDENS,—Your father has brought you this day to see me,
and he tells me it is his hope you 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 desert islands.—Your father’s friend,