Srn,—Mild and inoffensive though I meant to be, I find
I have offended someone with my article " Americans in Paris." This time there is nothing specific to 'answer; it is simply plain, through the fog of ferocious annoyance, that Mr. Boyle has met at second hand some- one whom he dislikes, and there is nothing to be chine about it. Mr. Boyle, in his excitement, has taken me altogether too much to heart, and so 1 do not propose to argue each point with him, from the improbable Southern general (of course from the Civil War: a perfectly legitimate image, almost as familiar from the cinema and stage as Buffalo Bill) to the " mine of inexhaustible prejudice" that, with a final and almost heroic confusion of metaphor, he " senses " in my future writing. Besides, when sarcasm gets to a certain thickness, it becomes opaque, and I cannot for the life of me see what he is trying to get at. The zest of his comments, the elaborate embroidery of each phrase I used, are rather flattering than offensive; and I suggest that, in a letter almost as long as my article, and with a grandiose, an almost epic indignation, Mr. Boyle is breaking my quite modest butterfly on a totally disproportionate wheel.—Yours faithfully,
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