P.S.—Just learned that we can not leave here until the 19th—which will bring me into San Francisco on the 26th. Birthday dinner served in diner—last call!
I've read the Browning poem and I now know why there was a Browning. Providence foresaw you and prepared him for you—blessed be Providence! * * *
Mrs. Havens asks me to come to them at Sag Harbor—and shouldn't I like to! * * * Sure the song of the Sag Harbor frog would be music to me—as would that of the indigenous duckling.
The Army and
Navy Club,
Washington, D. C.,
December 19,
1912.
My dear Mr. Cahill,
I thank you for the article from The Argonaut, and am glad to get it for a special reason, as it gives me your address and thereby enables me to explain something.
When, several years ago, you sent me a similar article I took it to the editor of The National Geographical Magazine (I am a member of the Society that issues it) and suggested its publication. I left it with him and hearing nothing about it for several months called at his office twice for an answer, and for the copy if publication was refused. The copy had been "mislaid"—lost, apparently—and I never obtained it. Meantime, either I had "mislaid" your address, or it was only on the copy. So I was unable to write you. Indirectly, afterward, I heard that you had left California for parts to me unknown.
Twice since then I have been in San Francisco, but confess that I did not think of the matter.
Cahill's projection[16] is indubitably the right one, but you are "up against" the ages and will be a long time dead before it finds favor, or I'm no true pessimist.