..
then utterly drop the idea....
* * * * *
Broke, I now wrote a long letter to Jarvis Alexander Mackworth.
I boldly complained of my poverty, inasmuch as it deterred me from my
work.
"I have now proven my case," I wrote him,--"my poems have appeared in
the _Century_, in _Everybody's_, in _Munsey's_....
"I have acted, as well, as a professional in a first-rate play, by a
great European dramatist ... giving Kansas the distinction of being the
first to produce _Iistral_ on the American stage....
"_Now_ I want to finish my four-act play on Judas. To do so I must have
enough to eat and a place to sleep, without being made to worry about
it, for a year....
"Can't you help me to a millionaire?"
Mackworth answered me generously, affectionately.
In two weeks he had procured my millionaire ... Derek, of Chicago, the
bathtub magnate ... how much could I get on with?
I wrote that I could do with seven dollars a week....
Mackworth replied not to be a fool--that Derek was willing to make it
fifteen, for a year's duration....
I replied that I could only take enough to fill my simplest wants....
Derek jocosely added fifty cents to the sum I asked--"for postage
stamps"-- ... for one year, week in, week out, without a letter from me
except those indicating changes of address, without sending me a word of
advice, criticism, or condemnation, no matter what I got into .
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