I wonder if you could give me a check for that much to pay him to-day. If you will I'll hold up my right hand--thus: that I'll have you a FIRST-CLASS STORY ON YOUR DESK BEFORE THE LAST OF THIS WEEK. I reckon I'm pretty well overdrawn, but I've sure got to see that Hall gets his before he leaves. I don't want anything for myself. Please, sir, let me know right away, by return boy if you'll do it. If you can't, I'll have to make a quick dash at the three-ball magazines; and I do hate to tie up with them for a story. The Same SYDNEY PORTER. MR. J. O. H. COSGRAVE [at this time editor of Everybody's Magazine.] [A letter to Gilman Hall, written just before the writer's marriage to Miss Sara Lindsay Coleman of Asheville, N. C.] WEDNESDAY. Dear Gilman: Your two letters received this A.M. Mighty good letters, too, and cheering. Mrs. Jas. Coleman is writing Mrs. Ball to-day. She is practically the hostess at Wynn Cottage where the hullabaloo will occur. Say, won't you please do one or two little things for me before you leave, as you have so kindly offered? (1) Please go to Tiffany's and get a wedding ring, size 5º. Sara says the bands worn now are quite narrow--and that's the kind she wants. (2) And bring me a couple of dress collars, size 16Ω. I have ties. (3) And go to a florist's--there is one named Mackintosh (or something like that) on Broadway, East side of street five or six doors north of 26th St., where I used to buy a good many times. He told me he could ship flowers in good shape to Asheville--you might remind him that I used to send flowers to 36 West 17th Street some time ago. I am told by the mistress of ceremonies that I am to furnish two bouquets--one of lilies of the valley and one of pale pink roses. Get plenty of each--say enough lilies to make a large bunch to be carried in the hand, and say three or four dozen of the roses. I note what you say about hard times and will take heed. I'm not going into any extravagances at all, and I'm going to pitch into hard work just as soon as I get the rice grains out of my ear. I wired you to-day "MS. mailed to-day, please rush one century by wire." That will exhaust the Reader check--if it isn't too exhausted itself to come. You, of course, will keep the check when it arrives--I don't think they will fall down on it surely. I wrote Howland a pretty sharp letter and ordered him to send it at once care of _Everybody's_. When this story reaches you it will cut down the overdraft "right smart," but if the house is willing I'd mighty well like to run it up to the limit again, because cash is sure scarce, and I'll have to have something like $300 more to see me through. The story I am sending is a new one; I still have another partly written for you, which I shall finish and turn in before I get back to New York and then we'll begin to clean up all debts.