『Dear Miss Lemon,
When I found these cigarettes you had left I thought at first to keep them as a remembrance. But I am far from needing a remembrance. I then recalled that you had said you meant to stop smoking because cigarettes of this brand were no longer made & I thought I must save you from that dreadful heart-broken feeling you have when you don’t smoke, at times, if only for the brief space these two cigarettes would last. If you have stopped, & feel as I have felt, this brief reprieve will make you think of me with extraordinary gratitude. —Maybe that’s too much to hope; but short of that, these cigarettes have given me a chance to say something too trivial to say without an excuse. It is, that I had just the faintest fear you might really think me so pusillanimous as to have been offended that you “could bear the sight of me.” I guess not though.
Next year, please remember I sent these and thank me. And I now thank you for all the pleasure you gave me—& I suppose, everyone else in the neighborhood—by being here this year.』
It’s a letter written by Mr Mexell Perkins to his corresponding friend Miss Elizabeth Lemmon in year 1922.
Perkins is a great editor who had discovered and fostered many great writers, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and many others. Without his genius effort, some of the best American novels of his time might never be published.
Perkins is married man but he maintained a close and decent relationship with Miss Lemmon for 25 years mainly by correspodence.
We may say the above is a “love letter” written in year 1922. So conservative, dedicate, and full of soft heart of a real gentleman. Nowadays, who would write such kind of letter any way. And actually we don’t write anymore.
Perkins died in year 1947.
P.S. Max Perkins editor of genius, by A. Scott Berg
2017/7/25 a love letter in year 1922 Damakey
