39、March 3,1952

                          14 East 95th St.
                          New York City
                          March 3, 1952

Oh my,  i do bless you for that Walton’s
Lives.   It’s  incredible  that  a  book
published in 1840 can be in such perfect
condition more than a hundred years later.
Such beautiful,mellow rough-cut pages they
are, I do feel for poor William T. Gordon
who wrote his name in 1841, what a crummy
lot of descendants he must have—to sell it
to you casually for nothing. Boy, I’d like
to have run barefoot through THEIR library
before they sold it.
    fascinating book to read, did you know
John Donne eloped with the boss’s highborn
daughter  and  landed in the Tower for it
and  starved  and  starved  and  THEN got
religion. my word.
    Now listen,  I’m enclosing a $5 bill,
that Live makes me very dissatisfied with
my Angler which I bought before I met you.
It’s  one  of  those  hard-faced American
Classics-for-the-Masses editions,  Izaak
just hates it,  he  says  he’s  not  goin
around looking like THAT for the rest of
my life, so use the extra $2.50 for a nice
English Angler, please.
    you better watch out. i’m coming over
there  in  53 if ellery is renewed.  i’m
gonna climb up that victorian book-ladder
and  disturb  the dust on the top shelves
and everybody’s decorum. Or didn’t I ever
tell  you I write arty murders for Ellery
Queen on television?  All my scripts have 
artistic backgrounds—ballet, concert hall,
opera—and  all  the suspects and corpses
are cultured.  maybe  I’ll do one about
the rare book business in your honor, you
want to be the murderer or the corpse?

                                      hh

注释：
Walton’s Lives 《五人传》
what a crummy lot of descendants 多么可怜的后代啊
elope 私奔
Angler 《钓鱼者言》
American Classics-for-the-Masses editions 美国大众经典版
for the rest of my life 在我的余生中
book-ladder 书梯
victorian book-ladder 维多利亚时代的书梯；古董书梯
artistic background 艺术背景