for such
earnestness in writing to one who is, after all, practically a stranger to
me.

Forgive my naive zeal; but I remember that you spoke to me on the subject
with a note of restrained emotion which flatters me into thinking I may
not be misunderstood. And, to seek pardon for this personal tone by an
added personality, it distresses me to imagine a life like yours, with
which the world must deal bountifully in mere gratitude for the joy it
takes from you,--to imagine a life like yours, I say, sacrificed to any
such grim Moloch. Write, and win applause for gay cleverness, but do not
consider literature seriously. Above all, write me a word to assure me I
have not given offence by this very uneditorial outburst of rhetoric.

Sincerely yours,
PHILIP TOWERS.

II

JESSICA TO PHILIP

MORNINGTOWN, GEORGIA, April 27, 19--.

MY DEAR MR. TOWERS:

Since my return home I have thought earnestly of my visit to New York.
That was the first time I was ever far beyond the community boundaries of
some Methodist church in Georgia. I think I mentioned to you that my
father is an itinerant preacher. But for one brief day I was a small and
insignificant part of the life in your great city, unnoted and
unclassified. And you cannot know what that sensation means, if you were
not brought up as a whole big unit in some small village. The sense of
irresponsibility was delightful. I felt as if I had escaped through the
buckle of my father's creed and for once was a happy maverick soul in the
world at large, with no prayer-meeting responsibilities. I could have
danced and glorified God on a curbstone, if such a manifestation of
heathen spirituality would not have been unseemly.

But the chief event of that sensational day was my visit to you. Of course
you cannot know how formidable the literary editor of a great newspaper
appears to a friendless young writer. And from our brief correspondence I
had already pictured you grim and elderly, with huge black brows bunched
together as if your eyes were ready to spring upon me miserable. I even
thought of adding a white beard,--you do use long graybeard words
sometimes, and naturally I had associated them with your chin. You can
imagine, then, my relief as I entered your office, with the last legs of
my courage tottering, and beheld you, not