your
Mother's advice to you--now and all the time is "do only your best
work--even if you starve doing it." But you won't starve. You'll get
your dinner at Martin's instead of Delmonico's, which won't hurt you in
the long run. Anyhow, $1000. for 12,500 words is not a great price.

That was a fine tea you gave. I should like to have heard the good
talk. It was like the regiment of brigadier generals with no privates.

Your

MOTHER.

This is a letter written by my father after the publication of
Richard's story "A Walk up the Avenue." Richard frequently spoke of
his father as his "kindest and severest critic."

PHILADELPHIA, July 22nd, 1890.

10.30 P. M.

MY DEAR Boy:

You can do it; you have done it; it is all right. I have read A Walk
up the Avenue. It is far and away the best thing you have ever
done--Full of fine subtle thought, of rare, manly feeling.

I am not afraid of Dick the author. He's all right. I shall only be
afraid--when I am afraid--that Dick the man will not live up to the
other fellow, that he may forget how much the good Lord has given him,
and how responsible to the good Lord and to himself he is and will be
for it. A man entrusted with such talent should carry himself
straighter than others to whom it is denied. He has great duties to
do; he owes tribute to the giver.

Don't let the world's temptations in any of its forms come between you
and your work. Make your life worthy of your talent, and humbly by day
and by night ask God to help you to do it.

I am very proud of this work. It is good work, with brain, bone,
nerve, muscle in it. It is human, with healthy pulse and heartsome
glow in it. Remember, hereafter, you have by it put on the bars
against yourself preventing you doing any work less good. You have
yourself made your record, you can't lower it. You can only beat it.

Lovingly, DAD.

In the latter part of December, 1890, Richard left The Evening Sun to
become the managing editor of Harper's Weekly. George William Curtis
was then its editor, and at this time no periodical had a broader or
greater influence for the welfare of the country. As Richard was then
but twenty-six, his appointment to his new editorial duties came as a
distinct honor. The two years that Richard had spent on The Evening
Sun had been probably the happiest he had ever known. He really loved
New York, and at this time Paris and London held no such place in his
affections as t