panying letter. It was in the form of a cashier's check from the Marion County Bank Company. I wrote to Miss Harding and thanked her sincerely for the check. I applied it upon "back bills" immediately.
The work I was doing turned my thoughts toward literary effort, and I found myself once more attempting to write. The necessary funds were not forthcoming for a night summer course in literature at Columbia, and anyway the heat was not conducive to comfortable journeying uptown every third night. But I rented a typewriter and spent my evenings creatively at home. This was a great source of relaxation mentally, and on warm nights, when it seemed too sultry to retire, I would become oblivious to the heat and to fatigue as I sat before my typewriter, balancing this line and that, searching the dictionary for suitable synonyms, or turning to my beloved Keats for poetic atmosphere and delicacy of word manipulation.
Naturally the themes of my thoughts were my love for Warren Harding and my love for our child. It was upon such a night that I sat before my typewriter, reminiscently fondling my child and dwelling in the memory of her father, and wrote my visions into a poem. I had sat dreaming for hours before I touched the typewriter keys, but when I began to write at one o'clock in the morning, and lost myself in juggling lovingly the words which would best convey my thoughts, I felt, when a distant clock struck four, that I had really written some worth-while lines.
My belief was confirmed later by The New York Times poetry editor, who accepted and published the poem within ten days after I had made up my mind to send it to him. This was, however, not until late August. It was published in the Times of August 30th, 1926, under a partial nom de plume—"Ninon Britton." For this poem I received a check from the Times for $20 which I promptly had photostated, because it was the first
