Letter from Willa Cather, Pittsburgh, to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, 1912 August 14 : autograph manuscript initialed.

Thanking her for her long letter; writing that last night Isabelle (McClung) and she read the Scribners paper aloud with such enjoyment; requesting that when Sergeant is settled she look over the other "foreign" story she did in Cherry Valley; talking about how she was tired of the west and is glad to be out of it; describing the experience as "dans le desert, voyez-vous il y a tout et il n'y rien; Dieu sans les hommes" (In the desert there is everything and nothing--God without mankind); saying how she explained this to Julio who "was a wonder, but he couldn't, for very long, take the place of a whole civilization"; stating that Isabelle (McClung) and she have had peaceful and satisfying days reading volume 9 of Michelet.