
The last time I called on you we had a delightful conversation about books. And I would like to repeat this visit, but I know your time is taken up with callers of all kinds—and beside conversation while it may be retained in the memory years afterward is not like a written letter from an author that we can keep and cherish. I have your autograph in both your works but I want you to write me your views on the books a young man should be most familiar with, tell me the authors that have most delighted and instructed you. I have a few books and in them I have a few autograph letters that I preserve by putting carefully in the front, that gives them to my eyes an increased value. Now there are some authors that I cannot get a scrap of, they are dead I know you receive and have received correspondence from Emerson, Carlyle & Tennyson—havent you a bit you would spare me from some of these men if it is only a line—as Mark Twain says—was writ wis his own hand. I don't mean those letters you cherish and mean to till you die, but I would value them doubly as coming from you—
Yours Respectfully— John R. Witcraft.