I have written you this way (typewriter) because, as you have discovered, my writing is hard deciphering. I have given up trying to improve it, and don’t try any more. You have probably got the candy and hymn by this time,--neither amount to much, but I wanted to send them. I don’t understand -- -- -- --’s silence,--but certainly hope that I have not been relinquished as one of Akron’s temporary “makeshifts” or “reliefs.” It would really hurt. I have told you all that has happened. This rest would merely be to mention details of ungodly strain and hours of “Christmas rush” at the factory,--seventeen hours a stretch sometimes. When I have had time I have spent it with Dostoievsky’s _Les Freres Karamazov_ which I like even better than _The Possessed_. The beautiful young Alyosha, and Father Zossima! Dostoievsky seems to me to represent the nearest type to the “return of Christ” that there is record of,--I think the greatest of novelists. But I am forgetting Frank Harris, who, you know, comes second to the “woman taken in adultery.” --/--/ 1921 56: TO GORHAM MUNSON [_Cleveland_] _1/14/21_ Dear Gorham: --/--/ I’m slightly disabled today with a touch of la grippe and am remaining away from the factory. A talk with my father last week settled things more definitely for me than many months have afforded. I shall remain in my present capacity at the factory indefinitely until I find a job at some more “literary” work, when my father and I will more-or-less conclusively part hands so far as a business connection is concerned. At last he seems, after questioning various mutual friends as to my interests, etc., to have been forced into this much recognition of my persistence in artistic directions,--and it was gratifying to observe as gracious a surrender as he offered me. You see I have not said anything to him about my personal interests for almost two years, leaving him only what details of indifference to business as naturally revealed themselves throughout my association with him, to judge from. I long ago “gave up” talking over such sores with him,--and it has amused me vastly to find that at last the attitude aroused him to seek such indirect solutions to the “enigma.” Now I can hope to get a little reading and writing done before spring here in some sort of tranquillity. Before the summer is over I may have found me a journalistic job,--but the main point under either drudgery is that I accomplish some real writing. But this is the usual ante-room soliloquy, and I won’t bore you further with more of it.