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STUDLEY VICARAGE,
OXFORD.

Aug. 9. 1926.

Dear Man most Marvellous

It's Bacon no longer; it's Buchan.

"Oh what a noble mind is here enthroned -

The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword."

How do you do it? It seems impossible. Do you keep a posse
of 'Devils'? Johnson, Dougal, MacNab, & Koré, in less
than as many years, besides giving hostages to fortune -
as well as the host who go before, conquering & to conquer.
From China to Peru - Westward Ho - all seems yours.

Where do you get your pre-Homeric classics from? I'm sure
not Oxford. Certainly I didn't from Cambridge. Been reading
up Ancient Religions, & including Calvinism & Catholicism?
Thou art not far from the Anglo- variety of the latter, after
all. That still remains for you to conquer in your next. Try
it!

It is 11.30 on a Sunday night. I have just put down
"The Dancing Floor." Not only the floor is dancing, but my
whole world. I started it after tea - had to leave it for
6.30 service - could hardly keep it out of my sermon -
cut a needed supper short & been reading ever since,
enthralled, spell-bound. What a Monday I shall have!

There's one regret. You can't read such a yarn without
a regret - namely, that you have read it. (Don't say
you have seen something like this before!) It may be taken