Aurora,
West Virginia,
September 12,
1903.
Dear Sterling,
I have yours of the 5th. Before now you have mine of some date.
* * *
I'm glad you like London; I've heard he is a fine fellow and have read one of his books—"The Son of the Wolf," I think is the title—and it seemed clever work mostly. The general impression that remains with me is that it is always winter and always night in Alaska.
* * *
* * * will probably be glad to sell his scrap-book later, to get bread. He can't make a living out of the labor unions alone. I wish he were not a demgagoue and would not, as poor Doyle put it, go a-whoring after their Muse. When he returns to truth and poetry I'll receive him back into favor and he may kick me if he wants to.
No, I can't tell you how to get "Prattle"; if I could I'd not be without it myself. You ask me when I began it in the "Examiner." Soon after Hearst got the paper—I don't know the date—they can tell you at the office and will show you the bound volumes.
I have the bound volumes of the "Argonaut" and "Wasp" during the years when I was connected with them, but my work in the "Examiner" (and previously in the "News Letter" and the London "Fun" and "Figaro" and other papers) I kept only in a haphazard and imperfect way.
I don't recollect giving Scheff any "epigram" on woman or anything else. So I can't send it to you. I amuse myself occasionally with that sort of thing in the "Journal" ("American") and suppose Hearst's other papers copy them, but the "environment" is uncongenial and uninspiring.