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To W. W. Jacobs, in England:
REDDING, CONN,
Oct. 28, '08.
DEAR MR. JACOBS,--It has a delightful look. I will not venture to say
how delightful, because the words would sound extravagant, and would
thereby lose some of their strength and to that degree misrepresent me.
It is my conviction that Dialstone Lane holds the supremacy over all
purely humorous books in our language, but I feel about Salthaven as the
Cape Cod poet feels about Simon Hanks:
"
The Lord knows all things, great and small,
With doubt he's not perplexed:
Tis Him alone that knows it all
'
But Simon Hanks comes next."
The poet was moved by envy and malice and jealousy, but I am not: I
place Salthaven close up next to Dialstone because I think it has a
fair and honest right to that high position. I have kept the other book
moving; I shall begin to hand this one around now.
And many thanks to you for remembering me.
This house is out in the solitudes of the woods and the hills, an hour
and a half from New York, and I mean to stay in it winter and summer
1223
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