of some committee which looked to the better lighting and
This is just to say that I am alive and sleepy, and that my head is still its normal size, although I have at last found one man in Boston who has read one of my stories, and that was Barrymore from New York. The Fairchilds' dinner was a tremendous affair, and I was conquered absolutely by Mr. Howells, who went far, far out of his way to be as kind and charming as an old man could be. Yesterday Mrs. Whitman gave a tea in her studio. I thought she meant to have a half dozen young people to drink a cup with her, and I sauntered in in the most nonchalant manner to find that about everybody had been asked to meet me. And everybody came, principally owing to the "Harding Davis" part of the name for they all spoke of mother and so very dearly that it made me pretty near weep. Everybody came from old Dr. Holmes who never goes any place, to Mrs. "Jack" Gardner and all the debutantes. "I was on in that scene." In the evening I went with the Fairchilds to Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's to meet the S----s but made a point not to as he was talking like a cad when I heard him and Mrs. Fairchild and I agreed to be the only people in Boston who had not clasped his hand. There were only a few people present and Mrs. Howe recited the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which I thought very characteristic of the city. To-day I posed again and Cumnock took me over Cambridge and into all of the Clubs where I met some very nice boys and felt very old. Then we went to a tea Cushing gave in his rooms and to night I go to Mrs. Deland's. But the mornings with the Fairchilds are the best. DICK.
In the spring of 1891 my mother and sister, Nora, went abroad for the summer, and the following note was written to Richard just before my mother sailed:
This is just to give my dearest love to you my darling. Some day at sea when I cannot hear you nor see you, whenever it is that you get it--night or morning---you may be sure that we are all loving and thinking of you.
Keep close to the Lord. Your Lord who never has refused to hear a prayer of yours.
Just think that I have kissed you a thousand times.
Your letters are a great delight to me but I think you are going entirely too quickly. You do not feel it now but you are simply hurrying through the courses of your long dinner so rapidly that when dessert comes you will not be up to it. A day or two's rest and less greed to see many things would be much more fun I should think, and you will enjoy those days more to look back to when you wandered around some little town by yourselves and made discoveries than those you spent doing what you feel you ought to do. Excuse this lecture but I know that when I got to Paris I wanted to do nothing but sit still and read and let "sights" go-- You will soon learn not to duplicate and that one cathedral will answer for a dozen. And I am disappointed in your mad desire to get to Edinboro to get letters from home, as though you couldn't get letters from me every day of your life and as if there were not enough of you together to keep from getting homesick. I am ashamed of you. But that is all the scolding I have to do for I do not know what has given me more pleasure than your letters and Nora's especially. They tell me the best news in the world and that is, that you are all getting as much happiness out of it as I have prayed you would. I may go over in September myself. But I would only go to London. Now, then for Home news. I have sold the "Reporter Who Made Himself King" to McClure's for $300. to be published in the syndicate in August. I have finished "Her First Appearance" and Gibson is doing the illustrations, three. I got $175. for it.
I am now at work on a story about Arthur Cumnock, Harvard's football captain who was the hero of Class Day. It will come out this week and will match Lieut. Grant's chance. In July I begin a story called the "Traveller's Tale" which will be used in the November Harper. That is all _I_ am doing.
So far the notices of "Gallegher" have been very good, I mean the English ones.