I have been reading Masters’ latest, _Starved Rock_, and must mention to you my enthusiasm for “Spring Lake,” the best thing he has written since the _Spoon River_ elegies. “The Dream of Tasso” has a few splendid passages free from rhetoric, and there are others, a few, that satisfy. More and more am I turning toward Pound and Eliot and the minor Elizabethans for values. I have not written anything for a month, but I feel, somehow or other, as though progress were being made. Your estimates of Djuna Barnes and Ida Rauh are interesting and true. I have been instructed recently not to read behind my counter and so, working twelve hours per day, have not had time to do much reading. I want to get at your _New Republic_ reviews, if possible, tomorrow. The booklet, _1601_, is your own to keep. I can get another, I think, any day for the asking. My write-up in the paper was silly enough, but forced upon me, and misquotations as well. However, I took it as an agreeable joke and an anachronism in Akron. But the pater was furious, at the headlines in particular, and I spent a nervous day yesterday with him in explanations, etc. Sic semper. Akron has afforded me one purple evening, however. I got dreadfully drunk on dreadful raisin brew, smoked one of the cigars made especially for the Czar, defunct, of Russia, and puked all over a boarding house. You will believe me an ox when I tell you that I was on the job again next morning, and carried the day through with flying colours. I enclose an opus by Eugene Field,--very exclusive,--which you will copy if you wish, and then return. Do not let Burleson or your father see it, as it is quite strong. I think you will more than smile. --/--/ Yes,--Edgar Saltus _is_ gone. I remember reading him and a rare and wonderfully complete edition of Catullus on the night of the debauch. However,--I hope you will not think that my companion on that occasion was the one I mention early in the letter. This fellow of the raisin brew is another poor soul like myself, in Akron exile from N.Y. A very sophisticated and erudite fellow to whom I was introduced by my bookseller. 1920 34: TO GORHAM MUNSON [_Akron_] _Jan. 9th, ’20_ My dear Gorham: What a good job Somerset Maugham does in his _Moon and Sixpence_! Have just finished reading it at a single sitting. Pray take the time to read it if you haven’t already. How far it follows the facts biographical to Gauguin, I am not able to say, but from what little I do know, it touches his case at many angles. Your letter coming this morning calls echoes in my ears of many such moods familiar to me during my times in N. Y. and I know how you feel. The mentioned book, I suggest as a tonic for hardness,--we all need how much more of it!