U. has a very fine collection of rare translations, etc., from antiquity, and I have just been enjoying to the full his copy of the _Satyricon_ of Petronius (Arbiter), a rare and completely unexpurgated Paris edition, purported to have been translated by Oscar Wilde, although it seems to me too fine a job for what I imagine Wilde’s scholarship to have been. Also, I am enjoying _The Golden Asse_ of Apuleius, and some Saltus vols. that he has. I went to see Hampden in _The Merchant of Venice_ recently here. The way it was done, setting, costumes, speech, gestures,--everything was sickening. Hampden, in one scene only,--the tantrum with Tubal,--was good, everywhere else his acting was indifferent. I cannot understand how a man of his intelligence,--for I remember his Hamlet as being quite good,--will venture forth with such a cast of burlesque queens, (his Portia!!!) and bitches. The worst examples of antiquated theatricality, and mouthing of words! And the audience was ample and enthusiastic,--a true barometer of the American stage at present. --/--/ I shall be glad to get back to Cleveland for a while, if only to see the copies of Vildrac, Rimbaud, and Laforgue that have arrived from Paris since my leaving. I expect to return to W. later, in Jan. when the “season” here is on. I find agreement from my father that my lack of results here has not been so much a matter of personal inadequacy as the weather and general slowness of business here at this particular time.... I shall certainly be in an ungodly rush, though, all the time I am at the factory, as the holiday season orders will be coming in and things become perfectly maddening there for two months. However, anything will be better than the maddening experience I have been having here of clawing the air day after day without getting any but the most meagre results. --/--/ 51: TO GORHAM MUNSON _Cleveland,_ _Nov. 9th--’20_ Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- Yes, “Jurgen” has been breathing his _native_ Ohio air for two weeks now, and is elbow and knee-deep in shipping and packing at the factory. The Christmas rush has already begun and I’m tired to death tonight after a rush since five this morning. But in spite of all it has been better to get out of the ghostly time I was having in Washington, back into the usual smoky and tawdry thoroughfares. Does one really get so used to such things as, in time, to miss them, if absent? I am sure I should not miss factory whistles in Pisa or Morocco, but I frankly did miss them in Washington. Anyway, they were more enlivening (and the people they claim) than anything or anyone that I saw in W., which seemed to me the most elegantly restricted and bigoted community I ever ventured into. They say it has changed a lot since the war, and prohibition, of course, smothered its last way out.--I almost hope I will not have the opportunity of returning there in Jan., as expected. But you’ve heard most of this before.--