Along comes a letter from my father this morning offering me a position with him as travelling salesman! This is unacceptable, of course, even though I now can’t complete the rent on the room for the rest of this month and simply don’t know what is going to happen. If worse comes to worse I can go back to Woodstock and stay with Fisher who urgently invited me to stay a month or so whenever I liked. Just now I haven’t made up my mind about anything. I have no more illusions about advertising, yet that is the only thing I can talk about at all. Leffingwell (at Thompson’s) is out of town, so I have not been able to attempt any reinstatement there. The lady at _Machinery_ says she wants to use me there sometime and _may soon_, but the vacancy so far doesn’t exist there. Hal Smith at Harcourt seems to be neither sufficiently interested in me nor my work to fulfill any of my hopes there. And so it goes. There’s no point in going into more details. Jean’s new hygiene for himself is very interesting to me. He seems to be able to keep himself solid and undismayed. Certain organic changes are occurring in us all, I think, but I believe that his is more steady and direct than I have been permitted. My approach to words is still in substratum of some new development--the same as it was when we talked last together--and perhaps merely a chaotic lapse into confusion for all I dare say yet. I feel Stein and E.E.C.[33] as active agents in it, whatever it is, and I’ve a short poem to show you soon which presents more interesting speculation to myself than it does to anyone else. Suffice to say that I am very dissatisfied with both these interesting people and would like to digest their qualities without being too consciously theoretical about it. Stieglitz liked the drawings I brought back--and you’ll like the one of Brown I think. I’d like to paint and draw half the time, and write the rest. “Prince Llan” is published and I admire its strenuous prose. --/--/ 173: TO HIS FATHER _New York City_ _January 12th, ’24_ My dear Father: Your letter has been on the table for longer than I had expected. I had wanted to answer it more promptly in view of your real consideration in offering me such a favorable opportunity in your business, but I’ve been so altogether occupied since I came back from Woodstock in looking around here for a new position, interviewing people and answering advertisements, that there has been only the evenings--when there was either someone in to call, or I was too tired to write you as I wanted.