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[letterhead] 140 NORTH DEARBORN STREET CHICAGO

Thanksgiving day [penciled addition: [1920]] Dear Mary

  I came down this morning to write you a letter but I dont know as there is anything to say.  I got J?ss yesterday and it was like all of them, tho not any one ever wrote.  Why dont you pick out a few people and subjects & write into the ? and have them published.  No one can do if like you and they would make a great hit I read it to Frank Wolfe who was crazy about it and said what a shame it was that you didnt write.  He said that he couldnt write but made a living out of it while you could beat any one, & did nothing & to go on and do it.
  I like you find nothing new from day to day.  My office is filled all the time mainly by poor clients in trouble, people who have got money against the rules of the game & are trying to stay out of jail, people in all sorts of trouble. their voices crying & begging me to help as if I could do any thing if I only tried:  how I wish I could but I cant.  Lord what an awful mad house the world is. and it is thanksgiving day and all the damn fools in a fool world are giving thanks that they are alive  well I am not.
  Sunday I am to debate with Starr on the question is civilization a failure it ought to be easy to show, how any one can think any thing else I cant conceive.  I dont know why I do these things