I have answered your letters and written you dozens in the spirit; but when it comes to spreading the ink, I know I’ve been as the old darky song goes, “A liar and a conjurer, too.” There are periods of time when the sight of a pen or an ink bottle strikes me to stone. Will it be some slight excuse for not having written to one of whom I have thought by every mail, if I assert that not for months have I written a line for publication except one little short 2,000-word _rotten_ story? It be true. Oh, some sort of nervous condition—can’t sleep nor nothin’! Oh, yes, ma’am, thank you; feelin’ heaps better now. I live within a few doors of Broadway, but on such a quiet street that the little clock on my desk ticking sounds as loud as a cricket chirping under the honeysuckle vine on your porch on a fall night. Don’t you think you might come up this way some time? Ain’t there some of your folks that live around here? Seems to me there was. I’d rather see you than to have a bushel of diamonds. And if I can get a string on you I’ll tie more magnolias and gumdrops to it than Roseboro ever saw. Say—please come, won’t you? I do so long to see a human—a Heaven-sent, home-bred, ideal-owning, scrumptious, sweet, wholesome human with a heart such as I know you are—or, in the words of the poet, “one of whom you are which.” The folks up here are all right and lots of ’em are good to know, but—they ain’t got tar on their heels, Miss Carrie, ma’am. I’ve been thinking of running down to the Bluest Ridge for two or three weeks as soon as it gets warmer here. I want to go up somewhere in the mountings and have a quiet time with the sunrises and the squirrels, and I want to see some morning glories on a board fence. I’ve tried the dinky little hills they call mountains up here, and they ain’t no good. You can’t take forty steps in the wildwood without stumbling over a sardine box or a salmon can; and the quantity of Ikeys and Rebeccas that you scare up in the shady dells is sure something fierce. If I happen down in your range of mountings may I drop in and see you? I need to get away from town for a while, and I certainly would rather be there than anywhere I know of.