You ask me if I know what a retreat is. I do, because long before I was a Catholic, before I was a wild-eyed Socialistic revolutionary, I was a ritualistic Anglican, and I went twice up to Holy Cross Monastery at West Park. This is an Anglican institution, which observes a modification of the Benedictine rule. And there I learned about imitation retreats, anyway. I must go to a regular retreat sometime. I don’t expect to take any vacation this Summer, but I’m going to spend several Saturdays fishing. I hope you do not scorn that wholesome and unliterary diversion. Most writers of my acquaintance consider it lamentably base. I hope you were satisfied with your efforts at Peoria. I did what you asked. By the way, when you pray for the Kilmers, please include a new Kilmer, who is coming, we hope, in October. He--or she--will have Barry among his or her names, after the family from whom my wife is descended. Yours affectionately, JOYCE KILMER. * * * * * Mahwah, New Jersey. Nov., 1914. Dear Father Daly: We are now back in Mahwah, thank God! It’s the chief thing I thank Him for, of all the splendid things He’s given me--this home of mine. My children are all well, and my wife. Prayer has given Rose the almost normal use of one arm and the power to sit up. And prayer will do more. Yours affectionately, JOYCE. This is a postscript, to say that the smug young person portrayed in the _Citizen_ resembles me only “as the dew resembles the rain.” I am fat and gross, and I have “elastic and rebellious hair,” like M. Baudelaire’s cat. Someday I’ll have a decent picture and courageously send it to you. In my young youth, I was slightly decorative. But now I drink beer instead of writing about absinthe. And therefore-- * * * * * June 15, 1915. Dear Father James: Your suggestion as to a lecture tour is characteristically kind. I am already on the books of a lecture manager named Feakins, who manages Chesterton, Barry Pain and other people. I’ll probably lecture before Catholic organizations as well as secular ones, because I need the money, but I don’t want to for reasons you will, I know, understand. In the first place, I don’t want in any way to make money out of my religion, to seem to be a “professional Catholic.” In the second place, I have delight chiefly in talking veiled Catholicism to non-Catholics, in humbly endeavouring to be an Apostle to Bohemia. I have no real message to Catholics, I have Catholicism’s message to modern pagans. So I want to lecture chiefly to Pagans.