SIR:
It is excruciating the way you continue to persecute my great father. What is wrong with you? What started you to begin on us in this way? We never heard of you. Would you let my dear father alone?
He is a very deep student and it is intolerable for me to see his priceless attention drawn from his work at critical moments when he might be on the point of making profound discoveries. My father is a very absent-minded man, as great scholars usually are, and when he is interrupted he may even forget what he has just been thinking about.
Your letter was a very serious shock to him, and after reading it he could not even drink his tea at supper or enjoy his cold ham. Time and again he put his cup down and said to me in a trembling voice: "Think of his calling me a famous liar!" Then he got up from the table without eating anything and left the room. He turned at the door and said to me, with a confused expression: "I may, once in my life—but he didn't know anything about that."
He shut his door and stayed in his library all evening, thinking without nourishment.
What a viper you are to call my great father a liar.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
June 12.
DEAR BEN: