On the next page I find the very wise remark of your friend Miss Baxter (whom I would be glad to consider mine—I mean mein freund!) that you can’t write a love story because you know nothing about it. Miss Baxter is altogether wrong but none the less charming. That led me to inclose you a little story of mine—a thing that is apparently egotistical to do—that settles the question beyond all controversy. Read it some time when you are up in the arbour about twilight when they are calling you to supper—but don’t go. On page three of your letter I observe a reference to your picture. Sure, Mike! I asked you for your picture. And I’ve got it, ain’t I? I’d like to see you get it back! Oh, Carrie, if you “knowed” how folks try to get letters from me and can’t, you’d appreciate the delightful toil I take in writing to you. Ordinarily it’s just like laying bricks for me to write even a business letter, but when I write to you—lemme see what to say—it’s like lifting the lightest feather from the breast of an eider duck and watching it float through the circumambient atmosphere. (That strike you hard enough?) I’ll tell you what, Carrie—(now don’t get mad, Caroline) I need a boss. For the last month I’ve been so no-account and lazy that I haven’t turned out a line. And yet, I don’t think it’s exactly my fault. I’ve felt kind of melancholy and dreamy and lonesome, and I don’t sleep well of nights. Once I dreamed that I had a magnolia for you and you turned up your nose at it and went away with Jeff—you remember Jeff? _Everybody’s Magazine_ sent down the editor’s automobile and took me uptown to a distinguished nerve specialist, who decided that I had been working too hard, and advised me either to take a trip to Europe or some tablets he had in a box. I took the tablets. They didn’t taste bad, so I kept on taking ’em, and I ain’t a bit worse to-day. But none of ’em knew that what I needed was just somebody to fix a cushion for me on the sofa, and tell the man with the gas bill that I wasn’t in. You asked me what I get for short stories. I get ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty cents a word, and everything engaged long before it’s written. Now, I’ll tell you what to do: kick the mountains over and hurry to New York. It’s 50 per cent. of the game to see the editors in person. Right here is the only place on the American Continent where you can live. What are the mountains compared to it? Dear Carrie, kick the mountains over and take my advice. You are far enough advanced to make your way from the start. And I assure you, as I said, being on the ground is 50 per cent of the game.