Readers Respond

"Included please find three dollars for "Gay Bar", as advertised in the July issue. "Wind Woman" was good, if somewhat naive. Its greatest virtue is its honesty."

J.L., Washington, D.C.

"A week or two ago I wrote you a letter, commenting on the progress made by THE LADDER, and on various ideas set forth in the June issue of your magazine. After sending that letter off I wondered if perhaps it didn't sound pretty dogmatic, perhaps intolerant, in part. Tonight I have been reading Sherwood Anderson's letters, and I was brought to a halt by one which he wrote to the woman who was to be his future mother-in-law, There is a juxtaposition of ideas in this letter which, to me, was very moving. In one place Anderson wrote, 'Think what Christianity would gain if Christians did not feel themselves superior to non-Christians.' Then, in the following paragraph, 'We all do so much of this. The moral man sets himself above the so-called immoral. How does he know what immorality is? In every inch you set yourself above anyone, you hurt that other one.' That is, in itself, a form of morality, of course. And a damn good one, I think. Then, two paragraphs farther on Anderson writes, 'I have wanted to say so much about my feeling about Eleanor (his future wife) I can't say. The fact that my loving her should hurt others seems horrible to me. I don't want to touch her in her real self, change her. I don't want her if it is going to hurt her or you who are dear to her. I'd much rather live the rest of my life alone.'

To me, these two passages illustrate the morality which is, itself, love. As everybody knows, Sherwood Anderson

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