Handwritten seven page letter by probably Mr. Conway to Nancy C. Russell, no date, and about concerns with the revision of the Charles M. Russell biography.

This is good – fine art it ought to be – its a subject you know better than any other and its no compliment to have people tell you its good – The suggestions that follow are due to the fact than you are not always understood – your point of view, you the thought that prompts you (not in this but in your every day life) and I am anxious that your own friendly manner get over at the start because you are the world’s best “meeter [sic] of folks” and if you can get that touch in the first part of this – your end will make us many ^new^ friends as the chiefs & not be just a necessary “tag along” like the tail of a Kite, as is The written opinion of the wives of some great men. You have it all here and if you will let me clip some of the paragraph & repaste them in a different spot to illustrate my meaning of the ^two^ pages which follow I think I can show you how to make your own stuff friendlier & breezier in every way and it will still be yours – all yours! You cannot work on this in the next two days because of putting Jack in school and two hours let I’m being extra frank because the people who will look for purity of construction etc rather than warmth and life are not the kind you are aiming at. A big person don’t [sic] have to turn sails for any Sunday Excursionist in a row boat – you get me? Another thing – his name on the record of Montana St University of Montana may be Charles, but and its o.k. where formality is called for but when you heard he was coming to visit the Roberts he was spoken of as Charlie, thats how he was known, that’s what I’d use in this -Its friendly its real & it belongs “form bits in his pocket” – “the feed wasn’t so good” all sound like you were his kind and savvied his [illegible] him, his speech and his people – The earlier pages where you use expressions such as “preferred that mode of transportation” – is miles away in thought and expression – all right by itself but any body could say that – You be one of his kind and talk in the same atmosphere –to hell with the High Brows – You are big enough not to have to care for what any gimlet doe eyed Grammar I shark is going to think so don’t mix their line with yours –You’ve done it un- consciously here and There but It is hard for a person who has been very close to another to write of them in an impersonal way. I mean write from a detached point of view as a stranger would do. You have tried to do this in the first paragraphs and because the attitude is assumed it starts with just a feeling of coldness, or is “mechanical” some way – As soon as you forget yourself your natural warmth and feeling glows thro the lines and makes them alive. The cold matter-of-fact start has the same effect on the reader! of course in a work of this sort they are going to read it all regardless, but in spite of that the first paragraph of any book, story or article, long, or short, is very important in grabbing the readers interest , making him sit up and take notice and have that friendly feeling that makes him want to go on – Lots of writers start a story in the middle or at some ^other^ interesting or amusing point; get you interested; put over the foundation for the subject they are handling, then let the cold facts drop into place of their own accord later on – If this system is well handled it is friendlier and breezier. You really begin to breeze along in a freer way at the middle of page 4 – “Again alone, with four bits in his pocket etc.” and that’s your real line and the real goods right there & you go on that way! above all, what people want in a thing like this is intimate detail and for that reason your best bet as a start is when you first met the chief at Cascade & how he looked as it is written in your memory. You are off to a running start then and the reader is with you, seeing things thro your eyes – The rest - the facts of early life –will fall into place as you learned them a little at a time. will be enough for me – I can rearrange it & send special delivery today, or tomorrow at the very latest – See next page!

[Transcript by Lauren B. Gerfen, 2012-10-09]

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