I have never seen a fairer title page than this you have done for my book of sketches³—and yet I must ask you to change it!

You see it looks as if the second line were descriptive of the first: "not under forty" descriptive of the author. The description is, alas, all too true, and the newspaper men could never resist having fun with it. I had much rather change my age than ask you to change a page which is perfectly satisfying to the eye. But since I can't, I must appeal to your chivalry.
Not Under Forty
by
Willa Cather
Couldn't you arrange it like that, with the "by' in perciptible type? When a woman is drawing perilously near to sixty⁴ she becomes very discreet about her age! Anyone can look up the facts, of course, no escaping the facts: but I shouldn't like the fun the newspaper men would have at my expense. This does sound rather like a headline statement "Willa Cather: not under forty." It's a beautiful page—the type, spacing, everything about it. I hate to ask you to make any change, but with this book I think the author's name, introduced by a preposition, must come after the title.

May I take this occasion to tell ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩you that your decoration for "My Mortal Enemy"⁵ still seems to me the most gratifying possible comment on a story? They wear well. They touch all the essential points, and their severity is a model which the writer of that story would do well to follow. I often pick the book up to look at the drawings, and the one to which I most often turn is that of a thin thin, flimsy wooden door which recalls all the wretchedness of flimsy shelters in those hustling "cities" whose prosperity is built on nothing and there is no reality in the houses or their inmates or the people who dwell in them.