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% The Newberry / 60 W.Walton, Chicago 60610 26 April 67 Dear Jack: excuse th paper, but I hope to earn better in time. As planned, I had a luncheon confab with Ralph McCoy, director of Libraries at So. Ill. Univ, and we discussed only Conroy & Conroy, & letters to Conroy. They're with you all th way (if they can get you!). We were very serious, and partook of soup & stuffings with my stuff thrown in, all at Rickett's, a blithely temperate spot without a spigot on th premises. I told them, as you advised me, there's no chance of getting your archives. But I suggested that they bid on the Mencken letters, as a beginning; and if they please you, perhaps you will feel disposed to go on to bigger committments. I hope you like this idea. They have to like it, for it's the only feasible one for now. To resume my idea, as you heard it on Tuesday, I will say that if we get the Mencken letters together, and you supply a brief personal memo of the circumstances of your connection with HLM, and supply some of your letters to him, it can be published in a plump quarterly, with the greatest of ease and 'gusto' (a Mexicanism much employed by HLM, and CHM...). From the quarterly, it will certainly be picked up by one of the 'proletarian.' Conroy-hungry presses, perhaps by So. Ill, Un. Press (if they get their money-press repaired in th mean time, th penny-mad idealists). To repeat what I said to you, I think the Mencken letters with JC memo is a good place to begin, both emotionally and chronologically. Anything that you write on HLM now can be incorporated into your memoirs. It will be a logical and easy beginning. If you still feel that way, I will con todo gusto come to Moberly after May 11 and help you in any way I can to sort and label the various categories of your very exciting and unique archives. While I am there, we can discuss (between rounds of beer) the near future. I can see the far f. I think I told you, gently and between the lines, that Texass is leary of us'ns, th prol, th radical, the true. Even leary of my great friend BT. However else we may regard So Ill Un, it is friendly to our field, it has H. Moore (he may be there in May, certainly in June), and it has already started its prol & radical collections. The prices are getting levelled out; the 'going' price is the thing, now. And I'm glad that with you, and with almost everybody else, price is the lesser consideration. As I see it, your archives are priceless. Anything under that is just regular stuff. So here you have, again, too many words. I enjoy talking to you, and I hope that your Readin Machine ain't choked up. As for your Ritin Machine, mud in yore eyen! Yr slave, (with [?]] shop chains arizen & cast off!) Charlie