And just so am I related to the whole of life,—even to the “publicans” in my father’s congregation. Indeed, if the desire “to eat with sinners” insured salvation, there would be less cause for alarm about my miraculous future state. The attraction, you understand, depends not upon the fact of their being sinners, but upon the sincerity of their mortality. The more unassumingly these reprobates live in their share of the common flesh, far below spiritual pretences, the more does my wayward mind tip the scales of unregenerate humour in their direction. My instincts hobnob with their dust. But do not infer that I have identified you with these undisciplined characters. When I was a child, out of the rancour of a well-tutored Southern imagination I honestly believed that every man the other side of Mason and Dixon’s line had a blue complexion, thin legs, and a long tail. And once when I was still very young, as I hurried from school through a lonely wood, I actually saw one of these monsters quite plainly. And I thought I observed that his tail was slightly forked at the end! I have long since forgiven you these terrifying caudal appendages, of course, but, for all that, I keep a wary eye upon my heavenly bodies and at least one wing stretched even unto this day when my guardian angel introduces a Northern man. My patriotic instincts recommend at once the wisdom of strategy. And it is well the “personal demands” come from me to you; for, had the direction been reversed, by this time I should have sought refuge somewhere in my last ditch and run up a little tattered flag of rebellion to signify the state of my mind.

It is just as well that you advise me against trying my fortunes in your “literary metropolis.” My father is set with all his scriptures against the idea. “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to eternal life”; and, having predestined me for a deaconess in his church, he is firmly convinced that the strait and narrow way for me does not lie in the direction of New York. However, I have already whispered to my confidential hole-in-the-ground that nothing but the extremity of old-maid desperation will ever induce me to accept the vocation of a deaconess. Thus do a man’s children play hide and seek with the beam in his eye while he practises upon the mote in theirs! But if, some day when the heavens are doubtful between sun and rain, you espy a little ruffled rainbow, propelled by a goose-quill pen, coquetting northward with the retiring clouds, know that ’tis the spirit of Jessica Doane arched for another outing in your literary regions.

Meanwhile you amaze me with the charge that “of literature the city has no sense, or indeed only contempt,” and I await the promised explanation with interest. For my own part, I often wonder if there will remain any opportunities for literary intelligence to expand at all when the happy (?) faculty of man’s ingenuity has devastated all nature’s countenance and resources with “improvements,” cut down all the trees to make houses of, and turned all the green waterways into horse-power for machinery. Then we shall have cotton-mill epics, phonograph elegies from the tops of tall buildings; and then ragtime music, which interprets that divine art only for vulgar heels and toes, will take the place of anthems and great operas.

The books have come, and among them is another lady’s literary effort to make a garden. Judith it is this time, following hard upon the sunburned heels of Elizabeth, Evelina, and I do not know how many more hairpin gardeners. Why does not some man with a real spade and hoe give his experience in a sure-enough garden? I am wearied of these little freckled-beauty diggers who use the same vocabulary to describe roses and lilies that they do in discussing evening toilets and millinery creations.

VI

JESSICA TO PHILIP

My dear Mr. Towers:

We have had a visitor, Professor M——, the doctor of English literature in E—— College, which you will remember is not very far from Morningtown. He came to examine a few first editions father has of some old English classics—(I have neglected to tell you that this is father’s one carnal indulgence, dead books printed in funny hunchbacked type!). He is a young man, but so bewhiskered that his face suggests a hermit intelligence staring at life through his own wilderness. His voice is pitched to a Browning tenor tone, and I have good reasons for believing that he is a bachelor.

Still we had some talk together, and that is how I came to practise a deceit upon you. Seeing a copy of The Gazette lying on the table this morning, Professor M—— was reminded to say that there was a “strong man,” Philip Towers by name, connected with that paper now. I cocked my head at once like a starling listening to a new tune, for that was the first time I had heard your name praised by a literary man in the South. He went on to say that he had been delighted with your last book, Milton and His Generation, and asked if I had observed your work in the literary department of The Gazette. I admitted demurely that I had. He praised several reviews (all written by me!) particularly, and said that you were the only critic in America now who was telling the truth about modern fiction. Then he incensed me with this final comment:

“I do not understand how he does this newspaper work so forcefully, almost savagely, and is at the same time capable of writing such delicate, scholarly essays as this volume contains!”