Dear Grace: --/--/ But I didn’t accuse him of anything further at the time--and haven’t since,--hoping that he would possibly be able to get hold of the book and return it to me somehow, if he got frightened enough. However, I have a letter all written to him. It will be sent just as soon as I get time to type it out; probably this week-end. There’s nothing doubtful about what I say in it either. I’m only sorry that no action can be taken against him. We are both out of the state where the theft occurred--and the book has been banned by the mails, anyway, so I wouldn’t get much favor in the courts on that account. -- -- -- -- had the brass to come here the other day (this makes me think him almost nutty) and instead of having himself announced at the outer reception room--comes ranging around among the people in the office, inquiring for me, and then comes up and stands and chats at my desk without the least concern! AND--what do you suppose he wants of me. --/--/ Just think of such an idiotic project--to say nothing of assuming that I would care to risk my standing around here for such a project! Then he keeps asking me out to the -- -- -- -- with a kind of desperate insistence, as though he thought I could be recompensed for his defaulting by satisfying some “social aspirations.” He certainly is terrible, silly as well. I feel one hundred per cent better since I got back to copy work. I’m up on the fourteenth floor now with a wonderful view out over the Murray Hill section and the East River right off the edge of my desk. I’m far from being dissatisfied, as you suggested. The plain fact was, and still is--that New York takes such a lot from you that you have to save all you can of yourself or you simply give out. I need a good bed, but it will be a long time before I can get one unless you feel like shipping that little brass bed on the third floor down here to me sometime. That would be fine, and could serve me always here, but you’ll probably think it is out of the question to send it. It doesn’t make much difference how early you go to bed if you can’t get to sleep--you know that. And that has been the state of things with me for some time here. However, I’m really feeling all right. It’s just tiredness--and worry that you are very, very unhappy--what to do--etc. I don’t know what is wrong with Charlotte and Richard. They haven’t sent my books to me on the date they said they would, nor have I had a word from them since Cleveland. If they are going to get upset and offended about something that I don’t even guess having said to injure them--then, they, like a whole lot of other people who go around just aching to cut their own heads off, will have to do it. Perhaps they’ve just been very busy, though; it’s certainly too early yet to make any definite assumptions. --/--/ 154: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ _New York City_ _Aug. 25th, ’23_