That latest love letter to Enid has gotten under my hide, and I just have to shout greetings to you!
I passed through New York on the run just about a year ago, and didn't see anyone but Macmillans and Louis Ledoux. I was going like a scared coyote, and the look of that town increased my speed. Good heavens! how do you stand it? I did think of you and did long to see you; but, as a matter of fact, I was nearly broken down with a long reading tour, and I hadn't the heart to call on you in that shape after so many years. At Bethlehem I had to quit and hit for home. I had had six weeks of it and was fed up.
Well, anyway, I feel the old feeling; for you, Davis. It has never left me. I think I have rather enjoyed the idea that I was fond of Davis and that he might perhaps have much of the old kindly feeling for me, and that nothing else was necessary under those circumstances. It's fine to feel that way. It's thrilling.
I'll have to give you some of my news by way of getting back to you. I will be brief. The third piece in my cycle of the West, THE SONG OF THE INDIAN WARS, will appear early in the new year. I completed it in August after four and a half years of work, and it is far and away my strongest thing. A limited edition with fifteen drawings by Allen True will appear shortly before the trade edition. You will have a copy of the book from me. The other two pieces of the cycle, THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS and THE SONG OF HUGH GLASS are issued in the Modern Readers' Series with annotations for schools. Strange to say, the thing is spreading all over the country. It's the young generation I'm after - have been after for eleven years, since I began writing the cycle. Instead of working on the yawping mob from the top, we have been working on the young generation under cover, and we've gone farther than most folks can know.
But wait for the WARS.
Macmillans will bring out my COLLECTED POETRY - a volume of 750 pages - in the fall of 1925. They seem rather eager to cinch the matter now, before the WARS appears.
There is a lot more news, but as you are not used to me, I'll go easy.
I've had different people send you thing, and you've accepted some offerings made at my suggestion. I hope you don't object. I feel that you are the one logical person down there to whom the unknown should turn. You've done a lot of good in this world, Davis. I should think the knowledge of this fact would make you "lie awake at night and laugh".
Well, here's a snort from the Little Buffalo!
Do come back at me, and believe that I never think of you without a glow of warmth.
Jno. G. Neihardt
