My children insisted upon going to bed last night with pieces of Gussie's wedding cake under their pillows. Dady had the presence of mind to wake up in the night and eat his piece. He told me this morning that he dreamed that he was married to Mr. Cowen. Last evening I wandered down town in a furious rainstorm and tried to find somebody I knew. Failing in this, I meandered home and went to bed without saying my prayers, conscious of having spent an ill day. At the theatre this week: Columbia, "Pepita"; McVicker's, Lotta; Grand, Kate Castleton; Hooley's, "Private Secretary." Dock is trying to get me to go to the Columbia to-night, but your pale face looms up in my mind's eye and warns me not to go, or, at least, not to sit in a box if I do go. The conclusion of this letter has been sacrificed to the importunity of some autograph fiend from whose tribe I have had the greatest difficulty in preserving its fellows. VIII CHICAGO, Monday, September the 20th, 1886. The envious old Dock, who has never had an emotion, an ambition or a hope beyond a quart bottle of Ike Cook's Imperial, said to me but just now: "Why do you waste your time writing to that man Thompson? He will never thank you for it; he will put up none the more liberally when he returns." Then he added, with a bitter look: "You never wrote to me while I was at Springfield!" Ah, how little he knows of you, this peevish old glutton who cares for naught above pandering to his dyspeptic maw! But my writing to you has caused a great deal of scandal here in the office, and I fear I am seriously compromised. Cowen has been threatening to denounce me to you, but I have no fear that he will be able to grant you any time from his numerous [_a_] hoydens, doxies, and beldames. He threatened me for the mountenance of an hour this afternoon, but I bade him write and it pleased him--passing well knew I that he could not missay me with you. I am delighted with the result of the game at Detroit to-day--7 to 3 in favor of Chicago! This, I think, insures us the championship. Miller, our circulator, is very much disturbed because our country circulation has dropped about 1,000 in less than a fortnight; he has been hobnobbing with Ballantyne about it to-day. Mr. Stone is still in Kansas City hunting wild geese. "Pepita" is billed as the joint production of Thompson and Solomon, and about twenty people have asked me if you were the Thompson referred to and I have indignantly repudiated the libel, for, maugre my head, "Pepita" is just a little the rottenest thing I ever saw or heard.