way that the author would have no excuse
for writing to the _Times_ about it. He was overwhelmingly
complimentary. But along came the usual letter by return of post. Mr.
Untermeyer asked for enough space to "diverge from the critique at one
point." He said the review was too fulsome.

I wish Don Marquis kept a diary, but I am quite sure he doesn't. Don is
too--well, I was going to say he is too--but after all he has a perfect
right to be that way.

It's rather an important thing. Every one knows the fascination exerted
by personal details of authors' lives. Every one has hustled to the Cafe
de la Source in Paris because R.L.S. once frequented it, or to Allaire's
in New York because O. Henry wrote it up in one of his tales, and that
sort of thing. People like to know all the minutiae concerning their
favorite author. It is not sufficient to know (let us say) that Murray
Hill or some one of that sort, once belonged to the Porrier's Corner
Club. One wants to know where the Porrier's Corner Club was, and who
were the members, and how he got there, and what he got there, and so
forth. One wants to know where Murray Hill (I take his name only as a
symbol) buys his cigars, and where he eats lunch, and what he eats,
whether pigeon potpie with iced tea or hamburg steak and "coffee with
plenty." It is all these intimate details that the public has thirst
for.

Now the point I want to make is this. Here, all around us, is fine
doings (as Murray Hill would put it), the jolliest literary hullabaloo
going. Some of the writers round about--Arthur Guiterman or Tom Masson
or Witter Bynner or Tom Daly, or some of these chaps now sitting down to
combination-plate luncheons and getting off all manner of merry quips
and confidential matters--some of these chaps may be famous some day
(posterity is so undiscriminating) and all that savory personal stuff
will have evaporated from our memories. The world of bookmen is in great
need of a new crop of intimists, or whatever you call them. Barbellion
chaps. Henry Ryecrofts. We need a chiel taking notes somewhere.

Now if you really jot down the merry gossip, and make bright little pen
portraits, and tell just what happens, it will not only afford you a
deal of discreet amusement, but the diary you keep will reciprocate. In
your older years it will keep you. _Harper's Magazine_ will undoubtedly
want to publish it, forty years from now. If that is too late to keep
you, it will help to keep your