Dear Stieglitz: I am hoping that you have seen Waldo, as you mentioned in your letter, by this time. The idea seemed so sensible to me, knowing as I have, the uneasy frictions that have bothered both of you and having regretted so much the evident misunderstandings all around. It is very important for us all--that is, all who are trying to establish an honest basis for what work we get a chance to do. It isn’t, as you say, a matter of politics,--but something akin to our spiritual bread and butter. Not all our manna comes from the skies. And we suffer all-too-much from social malnutrition once we try to live _entirely_ with the ghostly past. We must somehow touch the clearest veins of eternity flowing through the crowds around us--or risk being the kind of glorious cripples that have missed some vital part of their inheritance. It’s good to hear that you have been “at the camera” again and that you are recovering, with physical and nervous rest, that extremity of delicate equilibrium that goes into your best activities. I know what it is to be exiled for months at a time. They’re the usual things with me, and lately it has been especially hard to be cut up between the necessities of a readjustment at the office (they’ve put me into a new department and I enjoy writing copy again to some extent) and the more natural propulsion toward such things as _The Bridge_. I’ve been in such despair about this latter for some time!--not seeing my way to introduce it in the way I want (the end and climax, what you have seen, is all that’s done so far) and not getting the needful hours to ripen anything in myself. If I can once get certain obligations disposed of in my family, I shall certainly break loose and do only such simple labor for my room and board as will not come into my consciousness after “working hours.” Streams of “copy” and ad layouts course through my head all night sometimes until I feel like a thread singed and twisted in the morning. This has been, very likely, as strenuous [a] year and as wasteful a one as I shall encounter for a long time, although you can never foretell such things as long as you have a family and connections. But I am looking forward to a more equable program when winter comes, when people’s windows are shut, cats are quieter and the air more bracing.