Dear Davis:-

Ambrose Bierce was wrong. It was doubtless just that wavering between two sets of values that made his life tragic. I know, of course, that you were not taking the statement very seriously and didn't expect me to do so.

My point is that you really don't want the Jap servants and mistresses and all that. You know better. There's a touch of gentle sadness in the end of your letter that makes me feel how well you know. People fool themselves when they regard themselves as very important. Even the greatest has nothing to crow about, if my notion is near the truth. My notion is sketched on the enclosed.

What difference does it make if a power works through your own personality or through the personalities of those for whom you make functioning possible. It's all one.

I love people who have begun to let go of their certainties. Somehow wisdom starts there.

I regard you as a tremendously successful person, and so do thousands of others. You are far more so than many of those - probably all of those - who have won large material reward. In most cases, their product isn't worth a damn. You have helped in the lighting of many torches. That is a wonderful thing.

What my value is, I don't know. I'm doing patiently, and with the enthusiasm of love, what I seem compelled to do.

Yours always,

Jno. N.

New York would make me cry, if I were good at crying. I never was. My God! The pathetic misapprehension of which it is an expression!