Transcription:
Alameda 11/9th 1894 Dear John Here I am again in my old quarters, where my brain has been so long absorbing nutriment
from surrounding books, like a calf sucking milk from its mothers udder. There's plenty of milk left, but somehow or other
the apparatus for taking it in, is not in such complete order as in days past, may be, the mental appetite is not so ravenous,
as when the arguments of Knowledge brought in their precious freights during the noonday of manhood. What think you? A month
ago, after winnowing out most of the chaff from the Ms. which was returned to me from the Century Mag. with a polite note
that they had the pleasure of reading it but--etc. I mailed it to Scribner like the prodigal son, it came home again last
week, accompained with the usual but. Those publishers must have some pretty good goats' foreheads. Now I know there's not
a line of nonsense or chaff in that paper, I would not have been ashamed to subject it to the criticism of the lamented Dr.
Holmes or any other master spirit of the literary world more than that, its all new matter. Well, I own to be disappointed,
es- 01871