My mother is much improved and she has urged me--the doctor says her recovery, though sure, will be gradual--to spend at least a month with her. To-day I have decided to do so. It will be of so much interest to her if I have my wedding clothes made here. You know how few they will be. My dresses last so long, and I dislike changes. I have found my same dear old mantua-maker and she is delighted and proud. But she insists that since I went to New York I have dropped behind and that I will not do even for Louisville. On my way to her I so enjoy looking at old Louisville houses, left among the new ones. They seem so faithful! My dear old mantua-maker and the dear old houses--they are the real Louisville. My mother joins me in love to you. Sincerely yours, POLLY BOLES. BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE _150 Wall Street, New York, June 10, 1912._ Edward Blackthorne, Esq., King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, England. MY DEAR SIR: I am a stranger to you. I should have been content to remain a stranger. A grave matter which I have had no hand in shaping causes me to write you this one letter--there being no discoverable likelihood that I shall ever feel painfully obliged to write you a second. You are a stranger to me. But you are, I have heard, a great man. That, of course, means that you are a famous man, otherwise I should never have heard that you are a great one. You hold a very distinguished place in your country, in the world; people go on pilgrimages to you. The thing that has made you famous and that attracts pilgrims are your novels. I do not read novels. They contain, I understand, the lives of imaginary people. I am satisfied to read the lives of actual people and I do read much biography. One of the Lives I like to study is that of Samuel Johnson, and I recall just here some words of his to the effect that he did not feel bound to honour a man who clapped a hump on his shoulder and another hump on his leg and shouted he was Richard the Third. I take the liberty of saying that I share Dr. Johnson's opinion as to puppets, either on the stage or in fiction. The life of the actual Richard interests me, but the life of Shakespeare's Richard doesn't. I should have liked to read the actual life of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. I have never been able to get a clear idea what a novelist is. The novelists that I superficially encounter seem to have no clear idea what they are themselves. No two of them agree. But each of them agrees that _his_ duty and business in life is to imagine things and then notify people that those things are true and that they--people--should buy those things and be grateful for them and look up to the superior person who concocted them and wrote them down.