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#3230: Willa Cather to Preston Cooke Farrar, February 4, 1901

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UNITED STATES COMMISSION
TO THE
PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1900
CHICAGO3
AUDITORUM BUILDING
PARIS4
20 AVENUE RAPP
My dear Mr. Farrar1: [Preston] [c/o Columbia University, New York, NY]

Before I close my any newspaper contracts in Pittsburg5, of which I have several pending, I want to ask your advice about a long cherished plan of mine. When I first graduated from the Nebraska State, I was not twenty6, and had a record of insubordination in Sherman7's classes behind me. What I wanted to do do than was to begin to teach English or English literature at some other school, but I was patently too young and too undignified, so I took the nearest substitute that came to hand. Since I have been here in Washington my headquarters have been in a university, and the atmosphere has appealed to me very strongly, and made the disagreeable features of a newspaper office seem more disagreeable than ever. It seems to me to be a good time to begin to think about making the change which I have always intended to make, and my family are very anxious for me to do so. My professorial friends down here have given me warm encouragement. It may be that I can get pretty much what I want here, but for personal reasons I would a little rather be in Pittsburg next year. I want to ask you whether you think there would be any chance for me in any of the high schools there, or if you are not much in touch with the schools now, what would be my best method of procedure to find out? I am aware of course that I should have to force my dignity by a hot house process., but I am getting to be an astonishingly serious sort of person now, so I think I am ready to take up a more staid pace.

Dorothy8 has written me vague and tantalizing hints of all sorts of glorious prospects for you in New York9, until I confess I am consumed with curiousity, and would be grateful for more definite information.

Isabel10 is at the hospital, and is mighty sick of it, but I think it will do the young person a world of good.

Please let me hear from you about your own affairs as well as mine.

Very faithfully, Willa Cather