How I envy you! There are few things that would please me so well as to "drop in" on you folks in Sterling's camp. Honestly, I think all that prevents is the (to me) killing journey by rail. And two months would be required, going and returning by sea. But the rail trip across the continent always gives me a horrible case of asthma, which lasts for weeks. I shall never take _that_ journey again if I can avoid it. What times you and they will have about the campfire and the table! I feel like an exile, though I fear I don't look and act the part. I did not make the little excursion I was about to take when I wrote you recently. Almost as I posted the letter I was taken ill and have not been well since. Poor Doyle! how thoughtful of him to provide for the destruction of my letters! But I fear Mrs. Doyle found some of them queer reading--if she read them. * * * * * Great Scott! if ever they begin to publish mine there will be a circus! For of course the women will be the chief sinners, and--well, they have material a-plenty; they can make many volumes, and your poor dead friend will have so bad a reputation that you'll swear you never knew him. I dare say, though, you have sometimes been indiscreet, too. _My_ besetting sin has been in writing to my girl friends as if they were sweethearts--the which they'll doubtless not be slow to affirm. The fact that they write to me in the same way will be no defense; for when I'm worm's meat I can't present the proof--and wouldn't if I could. Maybe it won't matter--if I don't turn in my grave and so bother the worms. As Doyle's "literary executor" I fear your duties will be light: he probably did not leave much manuscript. I judge from his letters that he was despondent about his work and the narrow acceptance that it had. So I assume that he did not leave much more than the book of poems, which no publisher would (or will) take. You are about to encounter the same stupid indifference of the public--so is Sterling. I'm sure of Sterling, but don't quite know how it will affect _you_. You're a pretty sturdy fellow, physically and mentally, but this _may_ hurt horribly. I pray that it do not, and could give you--perhaps have given you--a thousand reasons why it _should_ not. You are still young and your fame may come while you live; but you must not expect it now, and doubtless do not. To me, and I hope to you, the approval of one person who knows is sweeter than the acclaim of ten thousand who do not--whose acclaim, indeed, I would rather not have. If you do not _feel_ this in every fibre of your brain and heart, try to learn to feel it--practice feeling it, as one practices some athletic feat necessary to health and strength.