But if there had been any chance to tell you before I should have stated to you I had no interest in advertising beyond the readiest means of earning my bread and butter, and that as such an occupation came nearest to my natural abilities as a writer I chose it as the quickest and easiest makeshift known to me. Perhaps, in view of this, it will be easier for you to see why I left my position at J. Walter Thompson’s at the last of October, unwise as such an action would be understood from the usual point of view. I went to the country because I had not had a vacation for several years, was rather worn with the strain of working at high speed as one does in such high geared agencies, and above all because I wanted the precious time to do some real thinking and writing, the most important things to me in my life. The director of the copy department asked me to see him when I came back to New York, but he has not returned yet from out of town and I don’t know whether or not I shall return there. I told Grace that they had asked me to return definitely because I didn’t want her to worry about me: she has enough worries as it is. But so much for that.... I think, though, from the above, that you will now see why I would not regard it as honest to accept your proposition, offered as it was in such frankness and good will. I don’t want to use you as a makeshift when my principal ambition and life lies completely outside of business. I always have given the people I worked for my wages-worth of service, but it would be a very different sort of thing to come to one’s father and simply feign an interest in fulfilling a confidence when one’s mind and guts aren’t driving in that direction at all. I hope you credit me with genuine sincerity as well as the appreciation of your best motives in this statement. You will perhaps be righteously a little bewildered at all these statements about my enthusiasm about my writing and my devotion to that career in life. It is true that I have to date very little to show as actual accomplishment in this field, but it is true on the other hand that I have had very very little time left over after the day’s work to give to it and I may have just as little time in the wide future still to give to it, too. Be all this as it may, I have come to recognize that I am satisfied and spiritually healthy only when I am fulfilling myself in that direction. It is my natural one, and you will possibly admit that if it had been artificial or acquired, or a mere youthful whim it would have been cast off some time ago in favor of more profitable occupations from the standpoint of monetary returns. For I have been through some pretty trying situations, and, indeed, I am in just such a one again at the moment, with less than two dollars in my pocket and not definitely located in any sort of a job.