This is more scandal than I ever wrote in my life.  Lay it to circumscribed environment, and the lack of twenty miles over the pampa before breakfast.  We have all been vaccinated, and the officious gentlemen from the board of health have taken their grins and their formaldehyde and gone.  Ye gods, how we cough!

The Carlton order will go through all right, I think.  Phoned him this morning.  If it does, old man, we will take a month in September and explore the Mercator property.

Do you know, Hal, I have been thinking lately that you and I stick too close to the grind.  Business is right enough, but what’s the use of spending one’s best years succeeding in everything except the things that are worth while?  I’ll be thirty sooner than I care to say, and—­oh, well, you won’t understand.  You’ll sit down there, with the Southern Cross and the rest of the infernal astronomical galaxy looking down on you, and the Indians chanting in the village, and you will think I have grown sentimental.  I have not.  You and I down there have been looking at the world through the reverse end of the glass.  It’s a bully old world, Hal, and this is God’s part of it.

Burn this letter after you read it; I suspect it is covered with germs.  Well, happy days, old man.

Yours, Tom

P.S.  By the way, can’t you spare some of the Indian pottery you picked up at Callao?  I told Mrs. Wilson about it, and she was immensely interested.  Send it to this address.  Can you get it to the next steamer?—­T.

From Maxwell Reed to Richard Burton Bagley, University club, new York.

Dear Dick: 

Enclosed find my check for five hundred, as per wager.  Possibly you were within your rights in protecting your bet in the manner you chose, but while I do not wish to be offensive, your reporters are damnably so.

Yours, Maxwell Reed

From officer Flannigan to Mrs. Maggie Flannigan, Erin street.

Dear Maggie: 

As soon as you receive this, go down to Mac and tell him the story as I tell you hear.  Tell him I was walkin my beat, and I’d been afther seein Jimmy Alverini about doin the right thing for Mac on Monday, at the poles, when I seen a man hangin suspicious around this house, which is Mr. Wilson’s, on Ninety-fifth.  And, of coorse, afther chasin the man a mile or more, I lose him, which was not my fault.  So I go back to the Wilson house, and tell them to be careful about closin up fer the night, and while I’m standin in the hall, with all the swells around me, sparklin with jewels, the board of health sends a man to lock us all in, because the Jap thats been waiter has took the smallpox and gone to the hospitle.  I stood me ground.  I sez, sez I, you cant shtop an officer in pursute of his duty.  I rafuse to be shut in.  Be shure to tell Mac that.