Note the above address [110 Columbia Heights], and you will see that I am living in the shadow of that bridge. It is so quiet here; in fact, it’s like the moment of the communion with the “religious gunman” in my “F and H” where the edge of the bridge leaps over the edge of the street. It was in the evening darkness of its shadow that I started the last part of that poem. Imagine my surprise when E---- brought me to this street where, at the very end of it, I saw a scene that was more familiar than a hundred factual previsions could have rendered it! And there is all the glorious dance of the river directly beyond the back window of the room I am to have as soon as E----’s father moves out, which is to be soon. E---- will be back then from S. America where he had to ship for wages as ship’s writer. That window is where I would be most remembered of all: the ships, the harbor, and the skyline of Manhattan, midnight, morning or evening,--rain, snow or sun, it is everything from mountains to the walls of Jerusalem and Nineveh, and all related and in actual contact with the changelessness of the many waters that surround it. I think the sea has thrown itself upon me and been answered, at least in part, and I believe I am a little changed--not essentially, but changed and transubstantiated as anyone is who has asked a question and been answered. Now I can thank you for the wisdom of your last letter to me, and most of all for your confidence in me. (It is strange, but I can feel no place for paragraphs in this letter!) (Yet one goes on making paragraphs.) It came at the very moment of my present understanding, and it is as though it, in some clairvoyant way, included it. Only, I so much wish you were here these days for you are the only one I know who quite encircles my experience. I shall never, of course, be able to give any account of it to anyone in direct terms, but you will be here and not so far from now. Then we shall take a walk across the bridge to Brooklyn (as well as to Estador, for all that!). Just now I feel the flood tide again the way it seemed to me just before I left Cleveland last year, and I feel like slapping you on the back every half-hour. Malcolm Cowley was very nice in telling me about an opening in the office of Sweet’s Catalogues (architectural and engineering), and for the last two weeks I’ve been up there at five dollars a week the better salary than Thompson’s gave me. The work involves no extraneous elements like “human interest” and such bosh, albeit a great deal of care and technical information: but so far I’ve been able to straddle it, and here’s hoping.