I have been otherwise disgracefully blue. When I want to feel properly humble, I read "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan"--about half a page;--then I howl, and wonder how I could ever have written so badly,--and find that I am really only a very twenty-fifth-rate workman and that I ought to be kicked. Then the weather has been trying;--the mails are behind;--the afflictions of T[=o]ky[=o] manifold. Also I have been provoked to think that there is no other person like you known to me in the entire world,--and that you are by no means immortal,--and that, even as it is, you think ever so much more of me than I deserve. Also I have been meditating on the unpermanency of the universe, and considering the possible folly of making books at all.--This must be the darkness before the dawn: at least I ought to think so.
I have partly in mind the plan for making the best part of number eight out of stories adapted from the Japanese. Not sure that I can carry the plan out satisfactorily;--but I am resolved that number eight must be worthy of your hopes for me,--and that it shall prove an atonement for the faults of the first book dedicated to you.
Take all care of yourself, and believe me most grateful for that telegram.
DEAR FRIEND,--Two or three mornings ago I woke up with a vague feeling of pleasure--a dim notion that something very pleasant had occurred the day before. Then I remembered that the pleasure had come from your unanswered letter. I kept putting off writing, nevertheless, day after day, in consequence partly of the conviction that such a letter should not be answered in a dull mood, and partly because some of my college work this past week has been more than usually complicated--involving a study of subjects that I thoroughly hate, but must try to make interesting--the literature and spirit of the eighteenth century.
Well, even now, I do not quite know what to say about your letter. To tell me that I have something of your father's spirit more than pleased me--not because I could quite believe it, but because you did. Your father must have been a very fine man, without any pettiness,--and I have more smallness in me than you can suspect. How could it be otherwise! If a man lives like a rat for twenty or twenty-five years, he must have acquired something of the disposition peculiar to house-rodents,--mustn't he? Anyhow, I could never agree to let you take all the trouble you propose to take for me merely as a matter of "thank you." I must contrive ways and means to better your proposal--not to cancel the obligation, for that could not be done, but at least to make you quite sure that I appreciate the extreme rarity of such friendship.