It is bully to be writing to you in Athens, for I cannot think of a place in this world where you would be more at home spiritually than there; but when I say "there", I am not thinking of modern Athens at all, but of an Athens that is unknown to geographers. We have often been together when you were truly in Athens with the Nebraska winter just outside the window. I am not surprised that you remark, "there is really nothing in particular to say". Of course there is nothing to say that you could not and have not said to me gloriously in our ambrosial nights of long ago. "By going far, we discover nothing; by going fast, we overtake nothing". It has all been with you these many years that I have been made stronger by your friendship. Nevertheless, I hope that when you saw the place where Socrates is said to have been imprisoned in his last days, you thought of me, and also when you stood on the spot where long ago the great passages of Aeschylus were heard for the first time.
Since you left, I have been called to St. Louis for a conference with Pulitzer and Clark McAdams, head of the editorial page. Their idea is that I should return to St. Louis, doing two of my critical columns a week and writing regularly for the daily editorial page. Happily, the new arrangement will not begin until spring, and I shall be able to forge ahead to the end of the MESSIAH. I want to be in a center of population when the big things begin to happen. I am afraid they are not ready to happen very soon, but I want to be on the ground when they do. Macmillans are announcing THE SONG OF THE MESSIAHin their spring catalog, and they already have material for the dummy, although I know that the book cannot appear before next fall, and maybe not before January, 1935.
The State Teachers College of Moorhead, Minnesota, which is a part of Fargo, N. D., as you know, has invited me to lecture there and has offered me far more than I think I am worth. I shall be there on January 18.
It is good to know that you will be back in the U. S. before too long, and I do hope we can get together again, as we used to do. Will it be in the plains of Nebraska or in the mountains of West Virginia? I rather hope that it may be the former.
Jno.
