The Same
SYDNEY PORTER.

MR. J. O. H. COSGRAVE
[at this time editor of Everybody’s Magazine.]

      [A letter to Gilman Hall, written just before the writer’s
      marriage to Miss Sara Lindsay Coleman of Asheville, N. C.]

WEDNESDAY.

Dear Gilman: 

Your two letters received this A.M.  Mighty good letters, too, and cheering.

Mrs. Jas. Coleman is writing Mrs. Ball to-day.  She is practically the hostess at Wynn Cottage where the hullabaloo will occur.

Say, won’t you please do one or two little things for me before you leave, as you have so kindly offered?

(1) Please go to Tiffany’s and get a wedding ring, size 5-1/4.  Sara says the bands worn now are quite narrow—­and that’s the kind she wants.

(2) And bring me a couple of dress collars, size 16-1/2.  I have ties.

(3) And go to a florist’s—­there is one named Mackintosh (or something like that) on Broadway, East side of street five or six doors north of 26th St., where I used to buy a good many times.  He told me he could ship flowers in good shape to Asheville—­you might remind him that I used to send flowers to 36 West 17th Street some time ago.  I am told by the mistress of ceremonies that I am to furnish two bouquets—­one of lilies of the valley and one of pale pink roses.  Get plenty of each—­say enough lilies to make a large bunch to be carried in the hand, and say three or four dozen of the roses.

I note what you say about hard times and will take heed.  I’m not going into any extravagances at all, and I’m going to pitch into hard work just as soon as I get the rice grains out of my ear.

I wired you to-day “MS. mailed to-day, please rush one century by wire.”

That will exhaust the Reader check—­if it isn’t too exhausted itself to come.  You, of course, will keep the check when it arrives—­I don’t think they will fall down on it surely.  I wrote Howland a pretty sharp letter and ordered him to send it at once care of Everybody’s.

When this story reaches you it will cut down the overdraft “right smart,” but if the house is willing I’d mighty well like to run it up to the limit again, because cash is sure scarce, and I’ll have to have something like $300 more to see me through.  The story I am sending is a new one; I still have another partly written for you, which I shall finish and turn in before I get back to New York and then we’ll begin to clean up all debts.

Just after the wedding we are going to Hot Spring, N. C., only thirty-five miles from Asheville, where there is a big winter resort hotel, and stay there about a week or ten days.  Then back to New York.

Please look over the story and arrange for bringing me the $300 when you come—­it will still keep me below the allowed limit and thereafter I will cut down instead of raising it.