this fierce old world and am beginning
to find a beauty in making money (in moderation) as in making
statues. Always through my head one tune and words of Kipling set to
it.

"They passed one resolution, your sub-committee believe
You can lighten the curse of Adam when you've lightened the curse
of Eve.
And till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen
We'll work for ourselves and a woman, for ever and ever--Amen."

11, Warwick Gardens, W.
(postmark: March 4, 1901)

. . . I have delayed this letter in a scandalous manner because I
hoped I might have the arrangements with the _Daily News_ to tell
you; as that is again put off, I must tell you later. The following,
however, are grounds on which I believe everything will turn out
right this year. It is arithmetic. "The Speaker" has hitherto paid me
L70 a year, that is L6 a month. It has now raised it to L10 a month,
which makes L120 a year. Moreover they encourage me to write as much
as I like in the paper, so that assuming that I do something extra
(poem, note, leader) twice a month or every other number, which I can
easily do, that brings us to nearly L150 a year. So much for "The
Speaker." Now for the "Daily News," both certainties and
probabilities. Hammond (to whom you will favour me by being eternally
grateful) pushed me so strongly with Lehmann for the post of manager
of the literary page that it is most probable that I shall get
it. . . . If I do, Hammond thinks they couldn't give me less than
L200 a year. So that if this turns out right, we have L350, say,
without any aid from "Bookman," books, magazine articles or stories.

Let us however, put this chance entirely on one side and suppose
that they can give me nothing but regular work on the "Daily News." I
have just started a set of popular fighting articles on literature in
the "Daily News" called "The Wars of Literature." They will appear at
least twice a week, often three times. For each of these I am paid
about a guinea and a half. This makes about L3 a week which is L144 a
year. Thus with only the present certainties of "Speaker" and "Daily
News" we have L264 a year, or very likely (with extra "Speaker"
items) L288, close on L300. This again may be reinforced by all sorts
of miscellaneous work which I shall get now my name is getting known,
magazine articles, helping edit