Dear Charlotte et Ricardo: --/--/ In spite of many inconveniences, however, I am glad of coming out here. Temperate living, good sleep and considerable outdoor exercise have had their usual effects. The cold has kept us hopping, though, and I’ll be glad to greet the first warm days that come. Then there will be both more time and more comfort for reading and _The Bridge_. The finale of which is just about completed--but the antecedent sections will take me at least a year yet. At times the project seems hopeless, horribly so; and then suddenly something happens inside one, and the theme and the substance of the conception seem brilliantly real, more so than ever! At least, _at worst_, the poem will be a _huge_ failure! If you get what I mean. When I am a little better satisfied with certain details of the part already finished I’ll send it on to you, although I really shouldn’t--as isolated from the rest of the poem it would probably not be interesting. Mother wrote me that you called on her. She was extremely pleased, and remarked how beautiful and youthfully radiant my Charlotte was! --/--/ 233: TO GORHAM MUNSON _Patterson, N.Y._ _March 5th_ Dear Gorham: The long siege of snow--the mail delivery has been discontinued for six weeks, and isn’t resumed yet--despite occasional sportiveness with snow shoes and skis, has been a burden. Especially as I was swindled on a fifty-gal. drum of kerosene I bought for the stoves in my study, and have had to risk chapping hands every time I came near the typewriter to say nothing of tumbling through many a chilly night with chilblains from cold floors, damp, etc. It really would have been alright had I had pure kerosene, though. Nothing but the swindler is to blame.