As for the other suggestion,--who ever was such a pretty maker of compliments!--I can only say that I am happy to have a friend who thus thinks of me.
Gratefully, with much thanks for your charming letter,
DEAR McDONALD,--I did not think much of the title of Morrow's book; but your judgement of the stories interested me, and the selfsame evening I began the volume--in bed. I read three quarters at a run, and the rest early in the morning. They are queer and sometimes powerful little stories--not less interesting because they are, most of them, improbable. They have the charm of the now old-fashioned stories of 1850-70,--perhaps not finished to the same extent as the _Atlantic_ stories used to be; but they make me think of them a little. (The literary centres clamour for realism to-day; but I fancy that the taste for the romantic will live a good while longer.) Then again there is a little of the old-time gold light of California days here--that will always have a charm for readers. I wonder if Morrow is a young man: if he is, I should believe him likely to do still better in the future. If he writes for money, he need not do much finer work; but if just for love of the thing, I should say that he could finish his work better than he does,--as in the study of the emotions of the man who finds his wife untrue to him, and solves a moral problem after quite an ideal fashion. The subject was splendid: it might have been made more of.--But not to criticize things--especially things which I could not do myself--I must say that I enjoyed the tales, and that they ought to have a very good sale.
Somehow your own story--the "Highbinder story"--kept riding on the back of that gold dragon all the while I was reading. The real dominated the romantic, and yet betimes made the romantic seem possible. I could feel everything to be just as it was--my experience as a police-reporter gave verisimilitude to the least detail. You are after all a knight-errant in soul,--a real knight, tilting, not against shadows and windmills, but against the dragons of corrupted law and the giants of fraud who haunt the nineteenth century. You are a survival, I fear--there are few like you: you ride alone: all the more reason that you should take every care of yourself--care of your health; I fear you are not exercising enough, keeping too confined. If you are really, as I believe, fond of your little friend, don't forget his prayer that you make health your No. 1 consideration.