pe, the full story of that
tragic life may be told, and the manuscripts still cherished by his
executor made public. In the meantime, this letter, which he wrote in
1908, gives a sad and vivid little picture of the straits of unadmitted
genius:

"I write from Connor's saloon. Paunchy Connor has been my best--indeed
my only--friend in this city, when every editor, publisher, and critic
has given me the frozen mitt. Of course I know why ... the author of
'Vermin' deserves not, nor wants, their hypocritical help. The book was
too true to life to please the bourgeois and yet not ribald enough to
tickle the prurient. I had a vile pornographic publisher after me the
other day; he said if I would rub up some of the earlier chapters and
inject a little more spice he thought he could do something with it--as
a paper-covered erotic for shop-girls, I suppose he meant. I kicked him
downstairs. The stinking bounder!

"Until to-day I had been without grub for sixty hours. That is literally
true. I was ashamed of sponging on Paunchy, and could not bring myself
to come back to the saloon where he would willingly have fed me. I did
get a job for two days as a deckhand on an Erie ferryboat, but they
found out I did not belong to the union. I had two dollars in my
pocket--a fortune--but while I was dozing on a doorstep on Hudson
Street, waiting for the cafes to open (I was too done to walk half a
dozen blocks to an all-night restaurant), some snapper picked my
pocket. That night I slept in a big drain pipe where they were putting
up a building.

"Why isn't there a pawnshop where one could hang up MSS. for cash? In my
hallroom over Connor's saloon I have got stuff that will be bid for at
auctions some day (that isn't conceit, I know it), but at this moment,
July 17, 1908, I couldn't raise 50 cents on it. If there were a literary
mount of piety--a sort of Parnassus of piety as it were--the uncle in
charge might bless the day he met me. Well, it won't be for long. This
cancer is getting me surely.

"This morning I'm cheerful. I've scrubbed and swept Paunchy's bar for
him, and the dirty, patchouli-smelling hop-joint he keeps upstairs,
bless his pimping old heart. And I've had a real breakfast: boiled red
cabbage, stewed beef (condemned by the inspector), rye bread, raw
onions, a glass of Tom and Jerry, and two big schooners of the amber.
I'm working on my Third Avenue novel called 'The L.'

"I shan't give you my right address, or you'd