I have just returned from a trip through western Nebraska, Wyoming and southern South Dakota. Have been going over old battlefields and meeting old scouts by way of getting a more intimate sense of things necessary to my "Song of the Indian Wars" which is now my great task. Upon reaching home, rather fagged from loss of sleep, the train service being especially poor out there just now, I was gladdened by the precious inscription on the fly-leaf of "The Roamer" that you sent me. It was very generous of you to send me the book itself; but I can not say how deeply indebted I feel to you for writing yourself down as my friend. I have fed long on your books, beginning with "The Torch", and you used to seem very remote in some unattainable region where the gods are. The old sense of awe remains, for you remain to me a high priest of Humanism. But it is glorious to feel so much closer to you.
I am about to begin reading "The Roamer" and I shall go at it without haste. It is an insult, as I see it, to read in a day what a man has written in years, and out of a life experience such as yours has been.
I will write again as soon as I feel that I know something of your purpose and your achievement.
John G. Neihardt To Geo. Edward Woodberry, Beverly, Mass.
