Literary Love-Letters | Page 3

as our blood runs too slowly for
active exercise. I like to break off a piece of its cake (or its rank cheese
at times) and lug it away with me to my den up here for further
examination. I think about it, I dream over it; yes, in a reflective
fashion, I feel. It is a charming, experimental way of living.
Then, after the echo becomes faint and lifeless, or, if you prefer, the
cheese too musty, I sally out once more to refresh my larder. You play
also in your way, but not so intelligently (pardon me), for you deceive
yourself from day to day that your particular object, your temporary
mood, is the one eternal thing in life. After all, you have mastered but
one trick--the trick of being loved. With that trick you expect to take
the world; but, alas! you capture only an old man's purse or a young
man's passion.
Artificial, my letters--yes, if you wish. I should say, not crude--
matured, considered. I discuss the love you long to experience. I dangle

it before your eyes as a bit of the drapery that goes to the ball of life.
But when dawn almost comes and the ball is over, you mustn't expect
the paper roses to smell. This mystifies you a little, for you are a plain,
downright siren. Your lovers' songs have been in simple measures.
Well, the moral is this: take my love-letters as real (in their way) as the
play, or rather, the opera; infinitely true for the moment, unreal for the
hour, eternal as the dead passions of the ages. Further, it is better to feel
the aromatic attributes of love than the dangerous or unlovely reality.
You can flirt with number nine or marry number ten, but I shall be
stored away in your drawer for a life.
You have carried me far afield, away from men and things. So, for a
moment, I have stopped to listen to the hum of this chaotic city as it
rises from Dearborn and State in the full blast of a commercial noon.
You wonder why an unprofitable person like myself lives here, and not
in an up-town club with my fellows. Ah, my dear lady, I wish to see the
game always going on in its liveliest fashion. So I have made a den for
myself, not under the eaves of a hotel, but on the roof, among the
ventilators. Here I can see the clouds of steam and the perpetual pall of
smoke below me. I can revel in gorgeous sunsets when the fiery light
threads the smoke and the mists and the sodden clouds eastward over
the lake. And at night I take my steamer chair to the battlements and
peer over into a sea of lights below. As I sit writing to you, outside go
the click and rattle of the elevator gates and other distant noises of
humanity. My echo comes directly enough, but it does not deafen me.
Below there exists my barber, and farther down that black pit of an
elevator lies lunch, or a cigar, or a possible cocktail, if the mental
combination should prove unpleasant. Across the hall is Aladdin's lamp,
otherwise my banker; and above all is Haroun al Raschid. Am I not
wise? In the morning, if it is fair, I take a walk among the bulkheads on
the roof, and watch the blue deception of the lake. Perhaps, if the wind
comes booming in, I hear the awakening roar in the streets and think of
work. Perhaps the clear emptiness of a Sunday hovers over the shore;
then I wonder what you will say to this letter. Will you feel with me
that you should live on a housetop and eat cheese? Do you long for a
cool stream without flies, and a carpet of golden sand? Do you want a
coal fire and a husband home at six-thirty, or a third-class ticket to the

realms of nonsense? Are you thinking of Lane's income, or Smith's
cleverness, or the ennui of too many dinners?
I know: you are thinking of love while you read this, and are happy. If I
might send you a new sensation in every line, I should be happy, too,
for your prodigal nature demands novelty. I should then be master for a
moment. And love is mastery and submission, the two poles of a strong
magnet. Adieu.

NO. IV. FURTHER AUTOBIOGRAPHIC.
(Eastlake continues apropos of a chance meeting.)
So you rather like the curious flavor of this new dish, but it puzzles you.
You ask for facts? What a stamp Chicago has put on your soul! You
will continue to regard as facts the feeble fancies that God has allowed
to petrify. I warn you