Dear Gorham: --/--/ I’ve just read your critique in _The Freeman_, and while I have never been to a Provincetown performance, I should certainly want to after this of yours. _The F._ rejected my “Garden Abstract” along with _The N. Rep._ and _The Dial_, and I’m at a loss to understand such things in the light of some of the mediocre effects that are more-or-less the rule in the columns of the first two. Of course the theme was pure pantheistic aestheticism,--and I suppose they would say that it was too detached from life, etc. I’m started on a set of sketches connected with Akron life now, and enclose a sample.[11] Maybe I shall be able to do something in New York in the mornings, the best time for such work, but as you know, plans for that kind of thing can never be made. -- -- -- -- 45: TO GORHAM MUNSON [_Cleveland_] _July 30th, --’20_ Dear Gorham: --/--/ I have been promised the territory around Washington, D.C., Norfolk, Richmond, Va., etc., as a hunting ground for “selling,” beginning about the second week in September when I shall embark for Washington as headquarters. This last named place strikes me as interesting in the extreme,--even better than N.Y. which I know so well anyway. I shall more or less freely govern my own operations, rise and retire at later hours, and have a drawing account at the bank at my own disposal in addition to a good percentage commission on everything I sell. I must admit a happy surprise at my father’s recent appreciation of my efforts here during the last six months. He even made the unhoped-for concession of mentioning that he had chosen this territory for me on account of the better sort of business type that is in Washington and also on account of Washington’s “literary and journalistic associations.” Well, it will be much better than this smug atmosphere around here, and I rather tend to expect a moment or two of revived inspiration. Before closing, I must mention my enthusiasm for our Henry James. I have read recently his _American_, an early novel, and a group of tales in his “middle manner” collected in a book called _The Better Sort_, also I have been at his letters which I bought riskily but wisely, after all. -- -- -- -- 46: TO GORHAM MUNSON [_Cleveland_] _August 18th --’20_