Bougereau's nymphs.


NEW YORK--1890.
DEAR FAMILY:

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."

"Edmund Gosse is my London representative," he said; "you can
have the same work here. Come out and take lunch."
I said, "Thank you, I can't; I'll see you on Tuesday."

"All right," he said. "I'll come for you. Think of what I