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Like Fire Engines

The Editors

Among the flotsam that drifts about the internet, coming to surfers' occasional notice, is Arthur C. Fifield's mocking rejection letter to Gertrude Stein of 19 April 1912: 'Only one look, only one look is enough. Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one.' It received a flurry of attention in February 2011, and again a few weeks ago. Time perhaps for it to be joined by a note T.S. Eliot sent to Stein 15 years later, on 8 September 1927:

I am very sorry to return these chapters, but in any case I should not be able to use them for a very long time... The flow of contributions through The Criterion has lately been very much held up by one or two controversies which, like fire engines, must take precedence.