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I received your letter in reply to mine soliciting a contribution for the Lakeside Magazine, and am sorry you were not able to write for it, though I hardly expected you would be.
I thank you for the kind suggestion that I again enter the literary field. I have never abandoned it in fact, though I have not published anything since a story that appeared a couple of years ago in "Two Tales", a defunct Boston venture. But I wrote last year a novel of about 60,000 to 70,000 words. I had not completed my revision of it when the Fall business came on with a rush, and diverted me from it. I expect ere the Summer is over to finish it.
Several days before I received your letter I had taken up the MS. of "Rena Walden" with a view to re-writing it. I found myself much better able to realize the force of some criticisms of it that were made four or five years ago, when you were good enough to interest yourself in it. I have recast the story, and in its present form it is a compact, well-balanced novelette of 25,000 to 28,000 words. With four or five years of added study of life and literature I was able to see, I think, the defects that existed in it, and I venture now to regard it not only as an interesting story, but as a work of literary art. I shall offer it for publication in a magazine, and whether successful in that or not, shall publish it in book form. I hope to write many stories, and would like to make a worthy debut with this one.
My years of silence have not been unfruitful. I believe I am much better qualified to write now than I was five years since; and I have not used up a fund of interesting material which I might have expended on 'prentice work. Furthermore, I have saved from ten to fifteen thousand dollars since I was with you at Northampton, and have the feeling of security which even a little of this world's goods gives, so that I can now devote more time and, if necessary, some money to securing a place in literature.
Thanking you again for your kindly and inspiring wish, I remain, as ever,