I shall probably be thinking about the rents in your block, and wondering
if the family had best put up a sky-scraper, instead of doing all the
pretty little things you mention in your letter. At five-and-twenty one
becomes practical, if one is a woman whose father has left barely enough
to go around among two women who like luxury, and two greedy boys at
college with expensive "careers" ahead. This letter finds me in the trough
of the wave. I wonder if it's what you call "the ennui of many dinners?"
More likely it's because we can't keep our cottage at Sorrento. Well-a-
day! it's gray this morning, and I will write off a fit of the blues.

I think it's about time to marry number nine. It would relieve the family
immensely. I suspect they think I have had my share of fun. Probably you
will take this as an exquisite joke, but 'tis the truth, alas!

Last night I was at the Hoffmeyers' at dinner. It was slow. All such
dinners are slow. The good Fraus don't know how to mix the sheep and the
goats. For a passing moment they talked about you and about your book in a
puzzled way. They think you so clever and so odd. But I know how hollow he
is, and how thin his fame! I got some points on the new L from the
Hoffmeyers and young Mr. Knowlton. That was interesting and exciting. We
dealt in millions as if they were checkers. These practical men have a
better grip on life than the cynics and dreamers like you. You call them
plebeian and _bourgeois_ and Philistine and limited--all the bad names in
your select vocabulary. But they know how to feel in the good, old,
common-sense way. You've lost that. I like plebeian earnestness and push.
I like success at something, and hearty enjoyment, and good dinners, and
big men who talk about a million as if it were a ten-spot in the game.

You see I am looking for number nine and my four horses. Then I mean to