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DUNBAR: AN INTIMATE GLMPSE             Young

give me and be with me as if that letter had not been written.
Sincerely, your friend
Paul Laurence Dunbar

In a different vein, and with reference again to his photograph, a letter from Dayton of March 23, 1896:

My dear little Girl: I hope that you are not so Joel Chandler Harrissed, so George W. Cabled, so Frank L. Stantoned down there that you don’t know of our man and only Hoosier poet Jame Whitcomb Riley. I know better, so don’t guy!

I have just finished reading parts of your letter to the honorable U.S. Consul at Horgan, Switzerland (a late appointee) and we have had a good laugh over it. He had been rubbing his smooth McKinley face and saying: “She must be a very bright girl, she must be a very bright girl.” Well, you are, and your welcome letter has put me decidedly on my feet when I was feeling particularly groggy and a left-handed finger tap would have put it out.

My friend whose “studio Parisienne” I described is certainly “up to date”. She is a corker! Her picture and ours are be-fore me as I write and I feel better and healthier for their presence. I have been morbid for some days, but I am cured.

Didn’t I tell you what I did the night of the opposing entertainments? You are a social diplomat. What would you have done? I simply explained to one party that I should have to miss the theatre with them, but would join them later; went to the reception, stayed until 11:30 and then joined my other friends in time for the late supper, not too late for the sherry and in plenty of time for the champagne.

I only wish that in your slang vocabulary you could find some expression for “I can learn to love you” and be able to use it to me. In spite of all my resolutions that blessed sentence wrote itself. I am going to change my pen or have the will-power of my sentences and their persistency doctored.
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