Dear Comrade:-

Since it is to be so, hurrah for your going to W.Va.! And I do believe that things will be finer for you there, since it is a cultural college, as I understand. You belong where education is not a matter of preparing for a specific job. I can tell them that they are going to have an English Department in that college!

So there will be a change on the title page of the Modern Readers' edition of FRIENDS and GLASS.

Mrs. Seymour, of the Bookfellows, wrote me last week that she had just judged a poetry-reading contest among Chicago High School pupils, and that all the selections were from Glass and the Friends! I think we'd be pleasantly astonished if we knew just where the poems are being studied. Anyway, the progress of these things poems in the schools is a very remarkable thing. .

Doctor, I believe that fewer people than we would naturally think have the equipment for sensing the WARS as a whole. It is far easier to get the mood of Glass or of the Friends. In the Wars many people will never get anything but parts. There is practically no training now for the grasp of larger literary moods. It's a syncopated time; people are living with fragments of things; endless analysis, little synthesis. But, in spite of that, the Wars may win more than either of the other poems did at the outset, because of the subject matter. Think of this: Could an edition of 500 copies at $7.50 have been sold when the Friends appeared? It is unthinkable. There has been a big gain, in spite of six years of silence in a time when every day brings out an astounding genius, according to the loud-mouthed pifflers. This thing is moving on in the classic way for permanence.

Latham has informed me that the Collected Poems is (correct Grammar!) sent to the printer. Proofs in August, publication among the earliest spring books, which means about February.

I want to change the title of the MORE TRUTH etc book. When I see proofs, I may hit upon a title.

I had already written about the proposed monument when your letter about W. Va. arrived.

I do hate to have you go away, and I am glad for you. You will keep your faith in the growing body of my stuff, I know; and there'll never be another friend like you. It really doesn't happen. You may feel safe in nourishing your faith, for I can see clearly again, and the Messiah will be beautiful. The opportunity is tremendous, and the theme exactly hits my feeling now.

Love always, good comrade, even though I can not always be worthy of your love,

Jno.

Give me your new college + new position again, so that I may send it to Macmillans in correct form.

One of my lyric lines was suggested as among best in English language, in N.Y. Eve Post Symposium. I don't know the suggester!

From Box 255, Branson, Mo.
Branson Jul 28 1 PM 1925

United States Postage 2 Cents 2

Dr. Julius T. House Wayne, Nebraska.