The wild rose is now going to pour down her graceful stalk a tubeful of the Balkan bacillus.
More trouble with the Balkans!
TILLY
(auto-intoxicated, not otherwise
intoxicated! Thank Heaven at least
for that!).
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
June 3.
DEAR BEN:
A bolt of divine lightning has struck me out of the smiling blue, a benign fulmination from an Olympian.
To descend the long slope of Olympus to you. A few days ago I received a letter from the great English novelist, Edward Blackthorne, in praise of my work. The great Edward reads my books and the great Ben Doolittle doesn't—score heavily for the aforesaid illustrious Eddy.
Of course I have for years known that you do not cast your legal or illegal eyes on fiction, though not long ago I heard you admit that you had read "Ten Thousand a Year." On the ground, that it is a lawyer's novel: which is no ground at all, a mere mental bog. My own opinion of why you read it is that you were in search of information how to make the ten thousand! As a literary performance your reading "Ten Thousand a Year" may be likened to the movement of a land-turtle which has crossed to the opposite side of his dusty road to bite off a new kind of weed, waddling along his slow way under the impenetrable roof of his own back.