Fisher has been over a couple of times for dinner and an evening. I couldn’t read the James book at all under present aspirations and interests, but I have been amazed much at the finesse and depth of Pater in his _Plato and Platonism_ which Fisher has subsequently loaned me. I think it beats _The Renaissance_ all hollow for style and ratiocination. What are you reading--and, more important, writing? I have been very lazy, but am growing more tight and particular--perhaps a favorable change after my somewhat flamboyant period in NY just before I left. I enclose the new version of “Recitative” (which may not be final, but which I think is really better than the original confession).[31] -- -- -- -- 168: TO GORHAM MUNSON _Woodstock_ _December 20th, ’23_ Dear Gorham: I had a kind of dirge all written to send you this morning before the mail came: fortunately I reconsidered sending it before one of us went into town, returning with your good news. I’m not worried about the _Fugitive_ prize because I had not been planning at all on it anyway, and I am enormously pleased at your news about _The Dial’s_ acceptance of you. IT WAS ABOUT TIME, however. What you have won there, too,--you may be sure--has been gained against a deal of prejudice against you, due mainly, of course, to your liaison with Waldo’s work, etc. The folks at Cleveland have disappointed me much, not only by sending me only half as much money as I asked for and require, but by a great deal of wailing. I guess I told you before you left here that my mother has taken a position, since explained to me as helping a friend of hers in a very de luxe antique and what-not establishment just started. It involves nothing but standing around and talking to people, I’m sure, yet mother is reported to return home every night so exhausted and wrecked that she can hardly speak. She has not personally written me for a month now. All the reports and symptoms come from my grandmother. But would it have been so much different had I been at Thompson’s during these two months, I am tempted to ask. They won’t stop to think or plan,--either of them,--beyond the next day ahead. And woes continue indefinitely. --/--/ Brown tells me and Nagle so little about _Broom_ that I don’t know how well founded your report from Burke may be. Brown loves his little secrets (of all sorts) and it’s pleasant to leave his surface sobrieties unchallenged. Certainly Matty is not going to let go of his sheet until it is either so dead as to be hopeless or else so loaded with debts that his successor would be crushed under them. But there is much mail every week to B. from _Broom_, and Cowley, Matty and B. seem to have an enviable little love nest all to themselves.