Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
Textual Feature | Appearance |
---|---|
passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
printed letterhead text | printed text |
text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
I am sorry if I wrote you an unenthusiastic letter a year ago; but sometimes when one has to reply to a great many letters at one sitting, one's enthusiasm does get pumped rather dry, you know. I surely can thank you very warm heartedly for your appreciation of the stories3 in "Obscure Destinies"4. Those three stories are, every one of them, very near to my heart, for personal reasons. Moreover, I want to do all I can to overcome the provincial American prejudice against stories of that length. This is the only country5 in which stories of that length are dismissed rather lightly as minor pieces, simply because they are short. It is the custom here to rank a novel like the "Arrow of Gold"6, which is distinctly Conrad7's second best, as more important than a masterpiece like "Youth"8, which could scarcely be better than it is - and which, of course, would have been quite ruined had he tried to expand it into a long narrative.
The long short story has always held such a dignified and important place in French literature that I wish it might command that same position in our own country.
No, it does not distress me at all to see
hear that a young man in Baltimore9 is working on a thesis, but if you know
him, I suggest that you warn him to approach his subject in a more rational manner
than that employed by young Mr. MacNamara10,
whose article11 in the Catholic
World12 you may have seen. It is absurd to measure the
"spiritual growth", or even the intellectual growth,
chronologically. Our great enlightenments always come in flashes. The spirit of man
has its ups and downs like his body, and the Roman Church of all others, it seems
to
me, has always had the wisdom and the
kindliness to realize that instability in us.