Dear Sir:--[it began--coldly enough, I thought] Your communication has been duly received and its contents noted. Although it is unlikely, and certainly, on my part, not desired, that we shall ever meet, I must inform you that my answer to your advertisement was written purely in fun and without the least idea of accepting your remarkable proposition. I will add that I am surprised that you have succeeded in inducing any woman of the least respectability to undertake such a journey, and I fear that your impression of her high character will receive some severe wrenches before your return. It must require unusual "nerve" to start off for several months with an unmarried man (or a married one, for that matter) putting ones self at his mercy, for that is what it amounts to. When the individual is wholly unknown to the woman who is to accompany him--when he may, for all she knows, be a "Jack, the Ripper"--the foolhardiness of the idea grows on one. I am sure I do not envy your companion, though it is by no means certain but you, and not she, will be the most swindled in the affair. I conjure you, however, though a total stranger, that if your friend proves to be merely a misguided girl of good intentions, you will not soil your soul with the greatest guilt of which a man can be capable. Remember, if your thoughts are dishonorable, that you have or have had a Mother, perhaps a Sister, whose memory should make you pause before you inflict irreparable ruin on one of the same sex. Yours Sincerely, A.B. New York, Dec. 31, 1897. A strange letter, I thought, take it altogether. I read it over slowly for the second time. The first few lines indicated disappointment, and a perusal of the remaining portion did not remove this impression, entirely. The final sentences sobered me. The reflections they induced were certainly not exhilarating. Although I have no sister and cannot remember my mother, I have a great veneration for my lost parents, and there is no string so susceptible of influence on my actions as the one this writer touched. I made a new resolution that I would carry myself like a gentleman in the truest sense of the word with Miss May. I had been honest in the expressions I used when talking the matter over with Harvey Hume. The earnest admonitions of Dr. Chambers had not been without effect. I meant to prove by this journey that I was capable of being in the close companionship of a young lady without becoming either a brute or a Don Juan. Looking at it even from the standpoint of an enlightened selfishness I was sure to get more satisfaction in a voyage with a woman whom I could respect than with one who assumed the role of a cyprienne.