Dear Cyndy,
Thank you for your letter. I hope your cough
continues to improve. Medication instilled into the eye, -
more precisely, instilled into the conjunctival sac of the eye,
does get into the blood stream and is carried to the rest of the body.
Notably, beta-blockers (timolol) can produce undesirable reduction of
the heart rate. The effect of corticosteroids is highly dose dependent,
and the very small amount that gets from your eye to your lungs
is unlikely to be of consequence, - but if it were, it would initially
more likely diminish the cough by reducing local inflammation. The adverse
effect of steroids, namely lowering the resistance to infection,
and ultimately making the bronchitis much worse would come later,
but is unlikely to occur at such low concentrations as reach the lungs, -
yet the question is certainly worth keeping somewhere in the back of ones mind.

I'm flattered by your interest in my juvenile literary efforts, - but
be careful what you ask for. I should be pleased to forward a copy of
my English-A Chappaqua essay. I have scanned it into the computer memory
in pdf format. It comes to about 290000 bytes, a file about the size of
an average image. If you would like me to send it as an attachment to my
next e-mail, - that's easy. Alternatively, I can print and mail it to you
in an envelope.  Please let me know your wishes.

In addition, there are various other high school and college essays
about which you might be curious. The essay on Nietzsche's madness, that I
mentioned, an essay on Beethoven's loneliness (482000 bytes) which I read
as salutatorian in 1946 at Germantown Friends School. These - and others -
were all preserved in consequence of my father's diligence and affection,
not to mention my voluminous correspondence with my parents between 1945
and 1952 when the telephone line was finally extended to Konnarock.

From time to time I lapse into a fit of narcissism and indulge in reviewing
essays and letters that I wrote many years ago. I look at them now,
surprised by my detachment, reminded of Milton's

His servants he with new acquist  
Of true experience from this great event  
With peace and consolation hath dismist,  
And calm of mind all passion spent.  

And of course, scanning what I have written into the computer, provides
an assurance of spurious immortality, on the cheap.

Last evening I spent several hours re-reading after perhaps 60 years,
Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. Pleased that
finally I was able to come to terms with all the incongruities and 
non-sequiturs, which on the original reading had occasioned doubts
about my own intelligence and understanding. Nathaniel had stumbled on
the text by some chance or other; he proposed to write an essay on
Apollonian and Dionysian themes in Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. I
wanted to be able to discuss his ideas with him with more than a
distant, hazy memory of what was on Nietzsche' mind. The topic is
made to order for Nathaniel, passionate as he is about music,
especially the work of Gustav Mahler. Today is Nathaniel's eighteenth
birthday. Benjamin, two years younger to the day, has turned sixteen.
Margaret and I are getting older, much older, and faster than the
children grow up.

I wish you a blissful week with Jo; untroubled by cough or by anything
else. Stay (or get) well; and give my best to Ned.

Jochen