Dragon's blood

Excerpt

To
CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND,
15 Hollis Hall, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Dear Cope,

Mr. Peachey Carnehan, when he returned from Kafiristan, in bad shape but with a king's head in a bag, exclaimed to the man in the newspaper office, "And you've been sitting there ever since!" There is only a pig in the following poke; and yet in giving you the string to cut and the bag to open, I feel something of Peachey's wonder to think of you, across all this distance and change, as still sitting in your great chair by the green lamp, while past a dim background of books moves the procession of youth. Many of us, growing older in various places, remember well your friendship, and are glad that you are there, urging our successors to look backward into good books, and forward into life.
Yours ever truly,
H. M. R.
Sausalito, California.