Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
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 |
Happy New Year! People are always writing me (people I don't know) that I
have "influenced" their lives. I wonder if you know that you have influenced
mine? Once, long ago, in some discussion, you said, half under your breath,
"Oh yes, of course, art simplifies." I had never thought of that
before: and I have been trying to live that
remark ever since. It was the way you said spoke, carelessly and yet as if there
could be no doubt about the matter; and because I felt a kind of authority
in you—didn't try to explain it, just felt it.
I had read thousands of pages that did not say as much to me as that sentence rather lightly dropped by a living voice—a very individual voice with a tempo and timbre distinctly its own. The sentence went home like an arrow—because of something in you and something in me. As I said, I've been trying to live it ever since.
With all my heart, Happy New Year!
Affectionately Willa Cather Mrs. Frank Todd1 130 Bellefield Ave Pittsburgh3 Penn. Myrtle Beach4 So. Carolina NEW YORK, N.Y.2 DEC 28 1934 11 PM
