I can realize, as you know, better than anyone else all that you say, except the single fact of your having grown so terrifically fatigued by the labor of our great work. I can’t think of you as tired. Somehow I don’t associate it with you. Can’t you just go away from it all for a week or two and then get the labor of the rear group out of the way and get it shipped and boxed? I am leaving for abroad next week, and of course I realize now that we can’t possibly unveil this fall. But I know I will have to move out of town if everything isn’t in readiness by early spring. That you should have a million dollars and ten years’ time for this work I know full well. Gutzon was still at his wit’s end. The first group of four figures had not been shipped until September 1922, and by contract all the forty-two figures in eight groups were to be returned before the end of December. There had been delays in getting clay into wax, delays which eventually made the unveiling four years late. For these delays the dimensions of the group and the sculptor’s determination that only his best work should be fixed in bronze were responsible. The Stone Mountain project, started in 1915 before the Wars of America project had been authorized, had now been suddenly revived and the sponsors were demanding Gutzon’s return to Atlanta. Still the sculptor’s work was virtually done when again, as the Italians say, “The devil put his tail in the business.” The total expense of shipping the crates of plaster casts to Florence had been about $2,000, as done by an American shipper, Caldwell and Company. Now came a bill for twice that amount for returning bronzes which occupied less space. The shipment was handled by an Italian who added extra fees for trucking from Florence to Leghorn and “deck charges.” Finally there was a peremptory demand from Gutzon’s friend for $2,000 as his commission. In paying other bills that he thought to be legitimate the sculptor had already used all available funds while he himself worked for nothing because, as he wrote to Mr. Lum in 1926, “This monument must be put up if I have to keep on paying for it to the end of my life and mortgage all I possess.” Confronted now by demands that he thought unjust but could not carry to court, he borrowed money to pay them and gave several of his small marbles as security.