ause New York, after being
denied by me so long, will have its hour?--or is this a permanent
thing? Somehow I cannot get away from the feeling that Boston is small
and narrow and cold. Perhaps it is because of the wonderful life that
thrills through almost everything in New York--even through the things
one dislikes. But I don't expect you to answer that, because I don't
believe you dislike anything thoroughly characteristic of New York; I
remember you once took me to a Broadway musical comedy and said you
enjoyed it.

"It is a long time since you were in Boston. Are you likely to come
here again within a month or two? If not, I wish you would write me
all the news of the Guardian and all about the great legal fight which
you and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are waging against the
octopus. I try to keep in touch with it through Uncle Silas, who of
course is intensely interested and who seems another man of late, but
he has not your gift of explaining in words of one syllable. Have you
ever thought of getting out a textbook of 'First Principles' of
anything, for juvenile intellects of all ages? I am not wholly making
fun.

"Yours faithfully,

"HELEN MAITLAND."

"It is," wrote Smith in reply, "one of the most soothing things
imaginable for a person who is about to admit a human weakness to find
his confession forestalled. Just as I had determined to confess to you
my possession of frailties entirely incompatible with the conception of
Richard Smith in the eyes of his ordinary acquaintances, I received
your letter. It was with the delight of the reprieved client of a
painless dentist that I read your admission that when such vital things
as trousseaux and weddings are in question, you are very much like
other girls--and perhaps even a little more so.

"I really breathe a huge sigh of relief. And with positive
cheerfulness I can now proceed to divulge the secrets I have learned
about one Richard Smith, Esquire, in the months which have elapsed
since a certain traveler from the Far East--relatively--returned home
from New York. As my somewhat cryptic rhetoric may not be clear, and
appreciating your fondness for words of one syllable, permit me to
state that this means you.

"Self-satisfaction, self-absorption, self-sufficiency, have had a
sobering shock. For I find that for the full and perfect enjoyment of
my city I myself am no longer enough. I need company--curiously, one
specific and particu