I could not commend this notion in another. In your work and Sterling's I have striven hard to help you to come as near to perfection as we could, because perfection is what you and he want, and as young writers ought to want, the character of your work being higher than mine. I reached my literary level long ago, and seeing that it is not a high one there would seem to be a certain affectation, even a certain dishonesty, in making it seem higher than it is by republication of my best only. Of course I have not carried out this plan so consistently as to make the book dull: I had to "draw the line" at that. I say all this because I don't want you and Sterling to think that I disdain assistance: I simply decided beforehand not to avail myself of its obvious advantages. You would have done as much for the book in one way as you have done in another. I'll have to ask you to suggest that Mr. Wood have a man go over all the matter in the book, and see that none of the pieces are duplicated, as I fear they are. Reading the titles will not be enough: I might have given the same piece two titles. It will be necessary to compare first lines, I think. That will be drudgery which I'll not ask you to undertake: some of Wood's men, or some of the printer's men, will do it as well; it is in the line of their work. The "Dies Irae" is the most earnest and sincere of religious poems; my travesty of it is mere solemn fooling, which fact is "given away" in the prose introduction, where I speak of my version being of possible service in the church! The travesty is not altogether unfair--it was inevitably suggested by the author's obvious inaccessibility to humor and logic--a peculiarity that is, however, observable in all religious literature, for it is a fundamental necessity to the religious mind. Without logic and a sense of the ludicrous a man is religious as certainly as without webbed feet a bird has the land habit. It is funny, but I am a "whole lot" more interested in seeing your cover of the book than my contents of it. I don't at all doubt--since you dared undertake it--that your great conception will find a fit interpreter in your hand; so my feeling is not anxiety. It is just interest--pure interest in what is above my powers, but in which _you_ can work. By the way, Keller, of the old "Wasp" was _not_ the best of its cartoonists. The best--the best of _all_ cartoonists if he had not died at eighteen--was another German, named Barkhaus. I have all his work and have long cherished a wish to republish it with the needed explanatory text--much of it being "local" and "transient." Some day, perhaps--most likely not. But Barkhaus was a giant.