I have been having some difficulty with Brown of Macmillans over the school edition of the WARS. He actually made me this proposition: To issue the Friends, Glass and the Wars in one volume of over 600 pages, my royalty to be the same as I now receive on the Friends-Glass volume. This was, of course, ridiculous. He kept insisting that the "trilogy" should be in one volume. I have at length made him understand that there is no "trilogy"; that there is no reason in the world why Wars and the other poems should be in one volume, and that the Wars will be, in fact, the third volume of the completed cycle, the second volume containing the Migration and Jed Smith. Now he writes me as though he had suddenly been illuminated, and it seems that we are to have the Wars in a single volume. I think there is little reason to doubt now. Seaver is away, and when he returns the two will decide.
I expect to begin my vacation July 23rd - three weeks. It will be a pleasure to edit STRAWS IN THE WIND, with Enid to help.
How is the Book coming on?
Kindest thoughts for Mrs. House and Mary.
Jno.
I hope that if Lovett does anything, which seems doubtful, he may have the fairness to choose someone outside the prejudiced New York bunch of petty politicians.
