Dear Grace: I allowed myself the luxury of three roses last Sunday, and I intend to make it as much a habit as my more persistent taste for “smokes” and wine will allow me--so pleasant have they made the room these last three days. But you are already aware of how much flowers affect me. And I am feeling better gradually as the cool days increase and the sneezing and nervous fever attending it begin to subside. You ask me about my summer, and I feel like answering that I am glad you feel that you have known little about it for summer in a place like New York (and especially when you are rushed with work as I have been) is provocative of little but groans and sarcasms. Now it’s over and “Sweet’s Architectural Catalogue” is ready for press. I may be laid off, because of this latter fact, because there is very little to do there for three months following the grand climax of the publication of that monstrous volume; but whatever happens it wouldn’t be as bad as the stifling days and nights and the strain of working with your head as raw as beefsteak. Of course I had always some solace from my happy times with friends, and I had a little swimming at Long Beach and one weekend visit to the country, but you know about that already. O’Neill has been at his place in Provincetown, Mass., all summer, so I have not seen him as you thought. My happiest times have been with E----, and I am looking forward to his return again from another South American trip next week. He is so much more to me than anyone I have ever met that I miss him terribly during these eight-week trips he takes for bread and butter. He doesn’t know his father has died during his absence, so it will be a considerable shock to him on landing. -- -- -- -- I can scarcely imagine the old house as a foreign property, perhaps no more standing. It’s so deep in my consciousness and so much the frame of the past. When it comes to my things, please chuck what books are in the glass-doored bookcase (never mind the others) in the drawers of my desk, the only article of furniture which I should like to keep. If you can’t keep that you might box the books and mss. and send them on to me here. There are photos, clippings, letters, etc., in the desk which I should like to try to hold on to. I have gotten so used to never being sure of next week’s rent, however, that I feel like never accumulating an extra sheet of paper because it’s painful for me to think of giving up things that have become a sort of part of me. I should rise above such feelings, I know, but I haven’t been able to thus far.