These clippings all came out in to-day's paper. The ladies in the Tombs were the
Shippens, of course; and Mamie Blake is a real girl, and the story is true from start to
finish. I think it is a pathetic little history.
Give my love to all. I will bring on the story I have finished and get you to make some
suggestions. It is quite short. Since Scribner's have been so civil, I think I will give them
a chance at the great prize. I am writing a comic guide book and a history of the
Haymarket for the paper; both are rich in opportunities. This weather makes me feel like
another person. I will be so glad to get home. With lots of love and kisses for you and
Nora.
NEW YORK--1890.
DEAR CHAS:
Brisbane has suggested to me that the Bradley story would lead anyone to suppose that
my evenings were spent in the boudoirs of the horizontales of 34th Street and has scared
me somewhat in consequence. If it strikes you and Dad the same way don't show it to
Mother. Dad made one mistake by thinking I wrote a gambling story which has made me
nervous. It is hardly the fair thing to suppose that a man must have an intimate
acquaintance with whatever he writes of intimately. A lot of hunting people, for instance,
would not believe that I had written the "Traver's Only Ride" story because they knew I
did not hunt. Don't either you or Dad make any mistake about this.
As a matter of fact they would not let me in the room, and I don't know whether it
abounded in signed etchings or Bougereau's nymphs.
Today has been more or less feverish. In the morning's mail I received a letter from
Berlin asking permission to translate "Gallegher" into German, and a proof of a
paragraph from The Critic on my burlesque of Rudyard Kipling, which was meant to
please but which bored me. Then the "Raegen" story came in, making nine pages of the
Scribner's, which at ten dollars a page ought to be $90. Pretty good pay for three weeks'
work, and it is a good story. Then at twelve a young man came bustling into the office,
stuck his card down on the desk and said, "I am S. S. McClure. I have sent my London
representative to Berlin and my New York man to London. Will you take charge of my
New York end?"
If he thought to rattle me he was very much out of it, for I said in his same tone and
manner, "Bring your New York representative back and send me to London, and I'll
consider it. As long as I am in New York I will not leave The Evening Sun."
