above pandering to his dyspeptic maw!  But my writing to you has caused a great deal of scandal here in the office, and I fear I am seriously compromised.  Cowen has been threatening to denounce me to you, but I have no fear that he will be able to grant you any time from his numerous [a] hoydens, doxies, and beldames.  He threatened me for the mountenance of an hour this afternoon, but I bade him write and it pleased him—­passing well knew I that he could not missay me with you.

  I am delighted with the result of the game at Detroit to-day—­7 to 3
  in favor of Chicago!  This, I think, insures us the championship.

Miller, our circulator, is very much disturbed because our country circulation has dropped about 1,000 in less than a fortnight; he has been hobnobbing with Ballantyne about it to-day.  Mr. Stone is still in Kansas City hunting wild geese.

“Pepita” is billed as the joint production of Thompson and Solomon, and about twenty people have asked me if you were the Thompson referred to and I have indignantly repudiated the libel, for, maugre my head, “Pepita” is just a little the rottenest thing I ever saw or heard.

I have not clapped my eyes on any of [b] your suburban friends since you departed.  At McVicker’s the other evening I found myself being scrutinized by a buxom country lass who looked as if she might be the fair unknown from Evanston.  Her rueful visage and the sympathetic glance she bestowed on me seemed to assure me that she, too, was pining for the grandest of old grands.

  My wife has been away for a week, but not a line have I had from
  her.  It has comforted me a good deal, however, to hear John say that
  she looked just about sixteen years of age at the wedding.

I took the Dock out to supper to-night and heaped coals of fire upon his head.  I let him have everything he wanted and I paid the bill with a flourish that would have reflected credit upon a Roman conqueror.

I wish you were going to be here day after to-morrow [c] to go with us to the last base-ball game of the season—­a postponed game between the Chicagos and the St. Louis Club.  I am to have a private box on account of being a mascot.

The Dock has just informed me that he has just rung into one of his editorials the expression “seismic phenomena,” and he seems to be as tickled as Jack Homer was when he pulled an alleged plum out of that historic pie.

I don’t know what you think about it, but this business of writing with five different colors of ink is queering me at a terrible rate and I am sure that I would die of softening of the brain if I were to keep it up any length of time.  But I presume to say that your sceptical little Bessie will think this the most beautiful page she ever saw.  I am sorry, but not surprised, to hear that your passes failed you on the Canadian