salacity which even I confess you amiably exaggerated in attributing
to my literary manner all qualities which the average reader most
desires in novelists,--there has proved to be in point of fact, as my
publishers and I had dubiously believed for years, a gratifying number
of persons, living dispersedly about America, prepared to like my
books when these books were brought to their attention. The difficulty
had been that we did not know how to reach these widely scattered,
congenial readers. But you--like Sir James Barrie's hero--"found a
way."

I cannot say, in candor, that your method of exegetical criticism has
always and in every respect appealed to me. Its applicability, for one
thing, seems so universal that it might, for aught I know, be
employed to interpret the dicta of Ackermann and Macrobius, or even
the canons of Doctors Matthews and Sherman herein cited, and thus open
dire vistas wherein critic would prey on critic, and the most
respectable would be locked in fratricidal strife. Moreover, I have
applied your method to many of the Mother Goose rhymes with rather
curious results.... But happily, I have here to confess to you, not
any disputable literary standards I may harbor, but only my unarguable
debt.

In brief, your aid obtained for me overnight the hearing I had vainly
sought for a long while; and of such thaumaturgy my appreciation will
never be, I trust, inadequate. I therefore grasp at the first chance
to express this appreciation in--as I have said,--a form which seems
not quite inept.

_Dumbarton Grange_
_December, 1920._