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Tarkington, Booth, 1869-1946

"The Gentleman from Indiana"

And now she insists--and you will know it from her by the
next mail--on returning to Plattville, forsooth, because she has been
reading your newspaper, and she says she knows you are in difficulties
over it, and it is her moral obligation--as by some wild reasoning of her
own she considers herself responsible for your ruffling patron's having
been alone when he was shot--to go down and help. I suppose he made love
to her, as all the young men she meets always do, sooner or later, but I
have no fear of any rustic entanglements tor her; she has never been
really interested, save in one affair. We are quite powerless--we have
done everything; but we cannot alter her determination to edit your paper
for you. Naturally, she knows nothing whatever about such work, but she
says, with the air of triumphantly quelching all such argument, that she
has talked a great deal to Mr. Macauley of the 'Journal.' Mr. Macauley is
the affair I have alluded to; he is what she has meant when she has said,
at different times, that she was interested in journalism. But she is very
business-like now. She has bought a typewriter and purchased a great
number of soft pencils and erasers at an art shop; I am only surprised
that she does not intend to edit your miserable paper in water-colors. She
is coming at once. For mercy's sake don't telegraph her not to; your
forbiddings work the wrong way.


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