Yours truly,
Cy Warman.
III.
Denver, March 20, 1892.
My Dear Warman:—Yours of the 17th, after some unaccounted-for delay, has but just reached me. Perhaps your gifted postmistress had not time to read it at once, and so held it over till leisure should serve her curiosity; or she may have found unexpected difficulty in deciphering your ingeniously atrocious writing, which I can imagine would only increase the curiosity of a gifted woman.
I once lived where the postmaster, a man of intellectual inclinations, was very slow at reading manuscript, being obliged to spell out the words laboriously, and I found the delay occasioned by the interest he took in studying my epistolary style, to improve his mind, a great annoyance. But a bright thought struck me one day, and I employed a typewriter. After that there was but little delay, for he could read print very well. I offer you the value of this experience, not at all on my account, for I can generally manage to make out what you are writing about pretty closely, but to promote expedition in mail service. It occurs to me to mention, however, en passant, that if you fail in that newspaper enterprise, you still have a bright career for your pen before you in the Orient, marking tea-chests. Do not imagine that I am complaining when I say that your friends would find more time to love you if you would employ a typewriter.
But all this is neither here nor there. I am in despair at the devil-may-care tone in which you write about Miss Parsons, and I am really alarmed about her not having arrived. She certainly could not have had much money by her to make a leisurely trip of it, stopping off to see the towns and the scenery en route.
Her mother was in a few moments ago, and not having heard from her, is naturally anxious, but I affected to consider it nothing. As a matter of fact, I regard it as very strange and alarming, considering that she left Denver with a man I strongly suspect is a scamp, and if the Sure Thing Mining Company has no office there, the worst is to be feared. It looks very bad.
My hope is, that in your indifference to my request, not appreciating the seriousness of the case, you have not looked around. I suppose it is a matter of no little trouble to find any one, unless you happen upon him, in such a mad rush as has set in for Creede. I met Whitehead of the News, who is just back from there, and he says that not only are the platforms even of the cars crowded, but men actually ride on top from Alamosa over, in the craze to get there. What insanity! How can such a rush of people be housed and fed in a camp that contained but five little cabins ninety days ago! But it is all grist for your mill, of course.
