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May 9th, ’23
Dear Bill:
At LAST! a letter from you!!! And let me mention that it was one of the most beautiful I ever got from anyone. AND I am expecting more. I read it the second and third times during my meal last night down in one of the Italian restaurants on the lower East Side. There you get a bottle of wine (fine, too!) and a good meal (that delights the eyes as well as the stomach) for about $1. And such service! The waiters all beam and are really interested in pleasing you. As Rych-tarik said when he was here last week, it’s just like Europe. I don’t know where I should have been by this time, however, had it not been for three or four very fine people,-- Gorham and his wife, and Slater Brown (the friend of Cummings, “B” in the “Enormous Room”) who, in spite of knowing me only a couple of weeks, has put me up nights in his room during the recent spell of grippe in the Munson household, and who has kept me in funds, poured wine into me, and taken me to the greatest burlesque shows down on the lower east side that you ever imagined. We went to one last night, and I so wished you were along. (The do every-thing but the ACT itself right on the stage, marvellous jazz songs, jokes etc. and really have the best entertainment there is in N.Y. at present). I have bids in for jobs a two very good agencies. The thing is a farce, however, the way you are kept waiting to know the outcome of one in-terview after another with various executives. J. Walter Thompson have had me on the string now for three weeks, and a letter this morning tells me that within the next few days I must drag myself up there again for another interview with one more Thompson executive. It is the same way at Batten’s. I shall have to cast about for anything available from stevedoring to table-waiting pretty soon if they don’t get a move
