"MY DEAR JIM, - I think that regardless of your frightful neglect I
shall be obliged to write you another note expressing sense of
under-obligationness to you for that letter. It is the best thing
I've run up against so to speak. As a result of it I am to have
the pleasure of hastening Detroitward. There I shall register at
the House. I shall sit in the window with my feet higher than my
head, and wear a one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-week air of
nonchalance. When the festive Detroit reporter shys past looking
hungrily at the cafe, I'll look at my watch with a wonder-if-it's-
time-to-dress-for-dinner air and fill his soul with envy. This has
been the dream that has haunted me ever since those childhood days
when you and I ate at Spaghetti's and then went to the House to
talk it over. I shall carry out the dire scheme and then - well,
then, if Fate says for me to hustle across the Great Divide, I'll
go with the feeling that life has not been in vain."
Later, January 14th of the following year, to the same friend who
was then in Manila as secretary to Dean Worcester.
"You may think it wondrous strange that I should be here in Canada
in mid-winter when I could as well be south. There is a mystery,
and since you are on the other side of the world I don't mind
telling. I am here on a filibustering expedition. I made a firm
resolution some months ago that a certain portion of Canada should
be annexed to the United States. I am here fostering annexation
sentiment, and have succeeded so well that the consent is
unanimous, and the annexation will occur just as soon as L. H.,
junior, is able to pay board for two, which will probably be a
matter of a few weeks. So don't be surprised if you receive a
square envelope containing an announcement which reads something
like this:
Mr. and Mrs. ______
of Bewdley, Ontario,
announce the ________ of their daughter
___________
to
MR. LEONIDAS HUBBARD, JR.
On his return to New York, a short time later, he was assigned a
trip through the Southern States. Hence a telegram, on January
29th, to a quiet Canadian town. On January 31st a quiet wedding in
a little church in New York, and then five months in the mountains
of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and among the forests and
cotton plantations of Mississippi.
Besides the work done for the magazine on this trip, he gave the
_Atlantic Monthly_ two articles, "The Moonshiner at Home," and
"Barataria: The Ruins of a Pirate Kingdom."
During the fall, winter and early spring, our home was in
Wurtsboro, Sullivan County, New York, a quaint old village in the
beautiful Mamakating valley.
