Thursday November 17th 1887.

Last winter, in Florence, I was struck with the queer incident of Miss McC.'s writing to the New York World that inconceivable letter about the Venetian society whose hospitality she had just been enjoying – & the strange typicality of the whole thing. She acted in perfect good faith & was amazed, & felt injured & persecuted, when an outcry & an indignation were the result. That she should have acted in good faith seemed to me to throw much light upon that mania for publicity which is one of the most striking signs of our time. She was perfectly irreflective & irresponsible, & it seemed to her pleasant & natural & “chatty” to describe, in a horribly vulgar newspaper, the people she had been living with & their personal domestic arrangements & secrets. It was a striking incident & it seemed to me exactly the theme for a short story. One sketches one's age but imperfectly if one doesn't touch on that particular matter: the invasion, the impudence & shamelessness, of the newspaper & the interviewer, the devouring publicity of life, the extinction of all sense between public & private. It is the highest expression of the note of “familiarity”[,] the sinking of manners, in so many ways, which the democratization of the world brings with it. I was prompted to make use of the incident in question, which struck me [as] a very illustrative piece of contemporary life – the opposition of the scribbling, publishing, indiscreet, newspaperized American girl & the rigid, old-fashioned, conservative, still shockable & much shocked little society she recklessly plays the trick upon. The drama is in the consequences for her – & it is of course interesting in proportion as the consequences are great.