Blake's kid--and there were
many--they were not those that had made her see in it "Birch Street--on
a slightly exaggerated scale"!

But, as the Greeks discovered many generations ago, it is impossible to
be high-minded or clear-sighted enough to outwit a secret unreason in
the total scheme of things. Else the virtuous, in the Greek sense, would
be always the fortunate; and perhaps then would grow too self-regarding.
Does the last and austerest beauty of the ideal not flower from this,
that it can promise us nothing but itself! You can choose a clear road,
yet you shall never walk there in safety: Chance--that secret
unreason--lurks in the hedgerows, myriad-formed, to plot against you.
"_Helas!_" as the French heroine might say. "Diddle-diddle-dumpling!" as
might say Susan.... Meaning: That strain, Ambo, was of a higher mood,
doubtless; but do return to your muttons.

Susan had reached New York late in November, 1913, and the letter to
Phil dates from the following January. Barely two months had passed
since her first calls upon Maltby and Heywood Sampson, but every day of
that period had been made up of crowded hours. Of the three
manufactured-in-advance articles for the Garden Ex., Maltby had accepted
one, paying thirty dollars for it, half-rate--Susan's first professional
earnings; but the manner of his acceptance had convinced Susan it was a
mere stroke of personal diplomacy on his part. He did not wish to
encourage her as a business associate, for Maltby kept his business
activities rigidly separate from what he held to be his life; neither
did he wish to offend her. What he wholly desired was to draw her into
the immediate circles he frequented as a social being, where he could
act as her patron on a scale at once more brilliant and more impressive.

So far as the Garden Ex. was concerned, his attitude from the first had
been one of sympathetic discouragement. Susan hit off his manner
perfectly in an earlier letter:

"'My dear Susan! You can write very delicate,
distinctive verse, no doubt, and all that--and of
course there's a fairly active market for verse
nowadays, and I can put you in touch with some
little magazines, _a cote_, that print such
things, and even occasionally pay for them.
They're your field, I'm convinced. But, frankly, I
can't see you quite as one of our
contributors--and I couldn't pay you a higher