we learn completely just as our blood runs too slowly for active exercise.
I like to break off a piece of its cake (or its rank cheese at times) and
lug it away with me to my den up here for further examination. I think
about it, I dream over it; yes, in a reflective fashion, I _feel_. It is a
charming, experimental way of living.

Then, after the echo becomes faint and lifeless, or, if you prefer, the
cheese too musty, I sally out once more to refresh my larder. You play
also in your way, but not so intelligently (pardon me), for you deceive
yourself from day to day that your particular object, your temporary mood,
is the one eternal thing in life. After all, you have mastered but one
trick--the trick of being loved. With that trick you expect to take the
world; but, alas! you capture only an old man's purse or a young man's
passion.

Artificial, my letters--yes, if you wish. I should say, not crude--
matured, considered. I discuss the love you long to experience. I dangle
it before your eyes as a bit of the drapery that goes to the ball of life.
But when dawn almost comes and the ball is over, you mustn't expect the
paper roses to smell. This mystifies you a little, for you are a plain,
downright siren. Your lovers' songs have been in simple measures. Well,
the moral is this: take my love-letters as real (in their way) as the
play, or rather, the opera; infinitely true for the moment, unreal for the
hour, eternal as the dead passions of the ages. Further, it is better to
feel the aromatic attributes of love than the dangerous or unlovely
reality. You can flirt with number nine or marry number ten, but I shall
be stored away in your drawer for a life.

You have carried me far afield, away from men and things. So, for a
moment, I have stopped to listen to the hum of this chaotic city as it