/# _Crapy Cornelia_, embodiment of the New York of H.J.'s youth, will be remembered as one of the stories in _The Finer Grain_. #/
/* Dearest Etta Reubell--my very old friend indeed! */
Your letter charms and touches me, and I rejoice you were moved to write it. You have _understood_ "Crapy Cornelia"--and people so very often seem not to understand--that that alone gives me pleasure. But when you tell me also of my now _living_, really, in green and gold, in the dear little old Petit Salon and almost resting on the beloved red velvet sofa on which--in other days--I so often myself have rested, and which figures to me as the basis or background of a hundred delightful hours, the tears quite rise to my eyes and I have a sense of _success in life_ that few other things have ever given me. I have not had a very good year--a baddish crisis about a twelvemonth ago; but I have gradually worked out of it and the prospect ahead is fairer. I really think I shall even be able to come and see you, and sit on the immemorial sofa, and see my kind and serried shelves play their part in your musée and figure as a class by Themselves among your relics--and to have that emotion I am capable of a great effort. I have great occasional _bouffées_ of fond memory and longing from our dear old _past_ Paris. It affects me as rather ghosty; but life becomes more and more that, and I have learnt to live with my pale spectres more than with my ruddy respirers. They will sit thick on the old red sofa. But with you the shepherdess of the flock it will be all right. You are not Cornelia, but I am much White-Mason, and I shall again sit by your fire.
I have beautiful communications from you all too long unacknowledged and unrequited--though I shall speak for the present but of the two most prized letters from you (from Cambridge and Chocorua respectively--not counting quaint sequels from Franconia, "autumn-tint" post-cards etc., a few days ago, or thereabouts, and leaving aside altogether, but only for later fond treatment, please assure them, an admirable one from Harry and an exquisite one from Bill.) To these I add the arrival, still more recently, of your brave new book, which I fell upon immediately and have quite passionately absorbed--to within 50 pages of the end; a great number previous to which I have read this evening--which makes me late to begin this. I find it of thrilling interest, triumphant and brilliant, and am lost in admiration of your wealth and power. I palpitate as you make out your case (since it seems to me you so utterly do,) as I under no romantic spell ever palpitate now; and into that case I enter intensely, unreservedly, and I think you would allow almost intelligently. I find you nowhere as difficult as you surely make everything for your critics. Clearly you are winning a great battle and great will be your fame. Your letters seem to me to reflect a happy and easy summer achieved--and I recognise in them with rapture, and I trust not fallaciously, a comparative immunity from the horrid human _incubi_, the awful "people" fallacy, of the past, and your ruinous sacrifices to that bloody Moloch. May this luminous exemption but grow and grow! and with it your personal and physical peace and sufficiency, your profitable possession of yourself. Amen, amen--over which I hope dear Alice hasn't _lieu_ to smile!...