No one will especially appreciate it -- -- -- --. By all this you must not think that I have joined the Right Wing to such an extent that I am rollicking in F. Scott Fitzgerald. No,--but by the straight and narrow path swinging to the south of the village DADA I have arrived at a somewhat and abashed posture of reverence before the statues of Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, Chaucer, sundry others already mentioned. The precious rages of dear Matty [Josephson] somehow don’t seem to swerve me from this position. He is, it strikes me, altogether unsteady. Of course, since Mallarmé and Huysmans were elegant weepers it is up to the following generation to haw-haw gloriously! Even dear old Buddha-face de Gourmont is passé. Well, I suppose it is up to one in Paris to do as the Romans do, but it all looks too easy to me from Cleveland, Cuyhoga County, God’s country. But Matty will always glitter when he walks provided the man in front of him has not sparkled,--which we hope he never does, of course,--and so I am happy to hear from him always about his latest change of mind. Quite seriously Matty is thrilling, in prose especially. His performance is always agreeable despite my inability to sympathize with his theories. Paris seems to be a good place for him to work and I suppose he will stay there at least until his contes are published. --/--/ 87: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT _Cleveland, O._ _February 11, 1922_ Dear Bill: Don’t let me keep on worrying. Your visit was a great pleasure to me, resulting in the renewal of old contacts and the discoveries of many new ones. I am so much interested in you now, that I am in danger of pestering you with all kinds of advice and admonitions. One of these is: not to let the caprices of any unmellow ladies result in your unbalance or extreme discomfiture. Even the best of them, at times, know not and care not what they do. They have the faculty of producing very debilitating and thoroughly unprofitable effects on gentlemen who put themselves too much in their hands. Woman was not meant to occupy this position. It was only the Roman Catholic Church who gave it to her. Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians knew better how to handle her. I suggest your reading De Gourmont’s _Virgin Heart_ for a delicate dissection of this kind of problem. De Gourmont was something more than a purely “literary critic,” you know. He was one of the most thorough students of physiology and psychology of the modern world. He was an adept scientist of the emotions. Stendhal was another, but less clear. All this suffering is quite romantic and beautiful, you know, but you pay a stupid price for it. I can’t help saying these things because of my interest and because I saw you go away in ominous style. I hope you haven’t been ill, and that you have merely forgotten to write me.