“The name was Robert Haralson, Caroline. And who can say why things happen as they do? Who can really tell why that door flung open on the Avenue to let an old man out should have stirred me to such rebellion that I who have been well raised by you and dear old mammy should have done such a madcap thing. The name did mean something to me—it brought vague memories—where had I known a Robert Haralson? And—queer world that it is—I got back to my room to find the answer to my question on the table. Mary Tate answered it. When you and good old John squeezed all the money you could out of the thin acres of land that we call home and sent me to school I met Mary. Perhaps you remember. But she was not a special chum. Soon she is coming on to New York for her first visit. She has just left Roseboro and there everybody is talking about Robert Haralson, known at home still as Bobby. Everybody is saying that he was the cleverest and the most popular lad that the town ever raised. A brilliant future was prophesied for him, but he got a wanderlust and went trailing off to the ends of the earth. Roseboro has just discovered that America’s most brilliant writer and playwright, to quote the papers, is none other than the man who as a little lad spilled the family wash—not the clean wash—in front of the Methodist Church as the congregation filed out from a revival service, and almost died of shyness. Roseboro, of course, is shaking congratulatory hands with itself that its prophecy has come true. Everywhere you go they talk of Bobby. Now he seems permanently to have settled in New York and to have found himself. Mary asks me if I have read, ‘Heart of the World.’ It came out anonymously, as did no end of brilliant stories. But as a playwright he can no longer hide behind his anonymity. Mary is coming to New York soon. She wants to meet him. She begs for my assistance. Her letter closes like this: ‘It can be done, Dicky. Gossip says further that shy Bobby Haralson loved one girl like mad. That girl was Caroline Howard.’ “Dear Caroline, I’ve fallen in love with Bobby’s fascinating letters. I’ve fallen in love with his chivalrous protection of me, with his, ‘Little gypsy girl of nineteen.’ Right this minute his card, name, and address lie on my table—and I am lonesomer than I was before I answered the ‘ad’ but—I won’t do what it is in my mind to do. It is your Bobby Haralson.” The clipping Dicky sent says that Mr. Haralson, who is just beginning to be known as Mr. Haralson, is at present one of the most interesting men in American literature. That he has achieved distinction both in fiction and in drama. That it is difficult to say in which he holds the more prominent position, that when so many writers seem to have written themselves out, he never seems to write up to the full extent of his powers, that always there is that sense of power held in reserve.