write as your Southern
mockingbird sings his "green-tree ballad"; the thought of that bird
mewed in a city cage and taught to perform by rote and not for
spontaneous joy, troubled me not a little. I am sending you by express
several books....[1]

IV

PHILIP TO JESSICA

MY DEAR MISS DOANE:

I have said such harsh things about our present-day makers of books that I
am going to send you, by way of palliative, a couple of volumes by living
writers who really have some notion of literature. One is Brownell's
_Victorian Prose Masters_, and the other is Santayana's _Poetry and
Religion_. If they give you as much pleasure as they have given me, I know
I shall win your gratitude, which I much desire. It is a little
disheartening and a justification of my pessimism that neither of these
men has received anything like the same general recognition as our fluent
Mr. Perchance, that interpreter of literature to the American
_bourgeoisie_. I will slip in also a volume or two of Matthew Arnold, as a
good touchstone to try them on. Now that you are becoming a professional
weigher of books yourself, you ought to be acquainted with these
gentlemen.

V

JESSICA TO PHILIP

MY DEAR MR. TOWERS:

Do not reproach yourself for having written me a "journalistic" letter. I
always think of an editor as having only ink-bottle insides, ever ready to
turn winged fancies into printed matter, or to enter upon a "lyrical
disquisition" concerning them. Your distinction consists in a disposition
to abandon the formalities of the editorial desk that you may "respond to
the personal demands of a new acquaintance." And this humane amiability
leads me to make a naive confession. There are some people whose demands
are always personal. I think it is their limitation, resulting from a
state of naturalness, more or less primitive, out of which they have not
yet evolved. They do not appeal to your judgment or wisdom or even to your
sympathy, but to _you_. Their very spirits are composed of a sort of
sunflower dust that settles everywhere. And if they have what we term the
higher life at all, it is expressed by a woodland call to some tree-top
spirit in you. Thus, here am I, really desirous of an abstract, artistic
training of the mind, already taking liberties with the sacred corners of
your editorial dignity by impressing _personal_ demands.

And just so am I related to the whole of life,--even to the "publicans" in
my father's congre