Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 1292

He telephoned L. M. Birkhead and asked him and his wife to come to Europe as his guests, but Birkhead declined on the grounds that one of them must be in the United States when Elmer Gantry was published.

Lewis was spending his mornings, with the help of two secretaries, on the galleys of that long novel, making considerable revisions, and the combination of hard work and hard frivolity exhausted him once more, so that he was compelled to spend three days in the Harbor Sanatorium in the last week of January.

Before he made that retreat, he telephoned Earl Blackman in Kansas City and asked him to come to Europe with him.

Blackman was to be in New York by February 2, because they were sailing at 12:01 next morning.

Lewis told him what clothes he should bring along, and enjoined him not to buy anything that he did not already own, they would do that in New York.

Blackman arrived a day or two early, and Lewis took him to a department store immediately and outfitted him, luggage and all, and then he took him to a party at the Woodwards that went on until four in the morning.