Dear Charlotte! dear Richard! --/--/ I am ready to send you one of the Light masks (from last year’s production of _The Ancient Mariner_). Jimmie promised me one of them, and I can think of no one better to send it to than you. I’ll get a box tomorrow, pack it and send it along. You can have some great fun playing with it in pantomime around the house. The effect is unearthly--the mask belonged to one of the angels, in fact, that are described as standing on the deck of the ship as it reaches the harbor in Coleridge’s poem. --/--/ I am so afraid that the land up there will get away from me before I get there that I can hardly sleep nights. I find that O’Neill is not in town and the other person, the publisher, from whom I had planned to possibly borrow the money is away also. Would it strain your pocketbook at this time to lend me the amount, so that I can at once clinch the bargain? It was so good of you to make the offer in the first place that I feel [I] am possibly taking advantage of your friendship. But if I could just settle the matter there before it is too late, I could later borrow the money from O’Neill, or someone else and return you at once the money borrowed. I will need a little over two hundred dollars as otherwise I shall not have anything to pay the lawyer’s fees with for looking up the deed, etc. Would $25.00 extra be too much? You must allow me to pay 6% interest on the loan--and to send you a regular note for the money. I would like the time stipulation about 5 years, but I would repay it as soon as possible before that. I know you trust me, but I also want to assure you of protection in the matter. --/--/ 215: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK _Patterson, New York_ _Sunday_ Dear Charlotte and Richard: I think I have found an even better solution for the “land problem” than the first proposition offered. A friend of Brown’s, Miss Bina Flynn, has just bought a lovely place within a half mile from Brown’s place, wonderful old Dutch house in good condition and built about the time of the American Revolution and with 160 acres of land around it. She needs money to help pay for it and has offered me 20 acres of the best of her land for $200.00. The piece that I have picked to buy is on the top slopes of a hill that overlooks the valley and it contains several open fields and a great deal of forest land. As it is much more convenient (within better access from the main road), and as it contains no useless swamps or wasteland as the other property included, I think I am getting as much of a bargain, if not more. Twenty acres is plenty to spread out in anyway, and there will be plenty of room on it for whatever place you would want, too.