The Clarence Darrow Letters

My Dear Mr. Salt —

I have spent the day & evening for the most part with your little book on "The Life of James Thomson". The book is well done, I would have known that you wrote it. I did not care so much for the earlier portions — The letters seemed for the most part ordinary, & of interest largely because they helped one to understand what came later. The chief interest to me were the closing chapters — & especially the last –

What vast sadness & what awful [rapids ?]! I closed the book & sat thinking. I wanted to cry. I do not know that I am correct, but I got the impression that your narrative & study of this strange & talented being — well, this is what I want to say: that it is not so much the subject of your book that provides the interest for me as the manner in which it is treated. You make one think of a wood-worm when I read your char-

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acter studies. You wonder about three the one under-exploration, up & down & across, until one who follows you feels that he has completely honeycombed the subject. Poor Thomson! How melancholy & helpless. I believe in the perfect parallelism & correlation of the physical & psychical. The anomalous mentality, like that of James Thomson, is caused by some hidden defect in his physi-

cal machinery. And I believe that it is to be one of the triumphs of future surgery to rectify many of these soul malformations, such as poor helpless Thomson had to carry thru life. You are always in such sincere sympathy with your characters — I mean you are always loyal to the one you delineate. I like this. I thank you very much for this book, as for all you have written & done.
Good night, my Brother, my dear, far away, but often-loved.

Chicago 11/15/1908

Moore