Feb 25 1893

My dear Mrs. Flake,

Do you know that in its presentation in Romance the final paragraphs of The Captain's Youngest are omitted? I am impressed by this because, to me, the story seems to lose the proper & artistic termination entirely. I call your attention to it because I feel it a friendly thing to do. I know you are trying for success and that you depend for it on the friendly feeling of people who have written stories. And I know that nothing would be more likely to prevent their allowing for the reprint of their work than the knowledge that extraordinary changes or omissions might be made in it, about which they have not consulted. I am an amiable little person and not in the least given to laying stress in on myself but I can scarcely tell you how cross it made me when I saw my dear little story, old as it is, robbed of that last thought which seemed to me absolutely necessary to complete it. Somehow I feel as if it must be the result of some mistake, or that you cannot possibly have been aware of it. This is an untidy letter but I absolutely steal time for letters so you must pardon it.

Yours sincerely,

Frances Hodgson Burnett

Don't think me hypersensitive. It is not that at all. But I realize so fully what the effort would be of T, or any one, should say once If you let Romance have a story & they are short of space they cut off the head or tail of it.