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Turks Islands, West Indies, August 11, 1906

Dear Madam: I have for a long time wanted to write and thank you for the sketches collected in the volume "Every one his own Way." I happened never to have heard of the charming bits of real life until March 1902, when my brother, W.D. and I were in Pittsburgh, just starting for a round trip on the Ohio river, to Cincinnati. It was a dismal March afternoon with a warm soggy snow falling, so mixed with rain you could not tell which it was. As we stopped to look in a book-store windows, he said: "Have you ever read "Every One his Own Way"? I said "No." O, my! he replied we must have it, and we went into the store and he bought a copy, which is now before me, on the dedication page, I afterwards wrote: "Presented to JAH. by MWH. on their trip down the Ohio on the steamboat Virginia, March 8, 1902. Pittsburgh." After supper, when too dark to see any more of the process of loading the boat, we took our places at one of the tables in the well lighted, comfortable cabin and he read to me--first the "Chatterbox" and he laughed and read and I listened and laughed, and there followed several other sketches, and thus I was