The Best Direct Mail Appeal Ever

This from a story by Robert Walser, originally published in the Swiss daily Neue Zurcher Zeitung, in 1915, translated from German by Damion Searls, and published in the January 2008 Harper's:

"As you well know, I am a great talent and as such in need of continual support. Where, my dear sir, do you have the nerve to leave me in the lurch, and hence to perish? I think I have every right to more fat advances. Woe is you, unhappy wretch, if you don't send me ASAP enough for me to keep dawdling. But I am quite sure that you would never be foolhardy enough, and hence never dare, to remain insensitive to the prospect of nefarious, predatory demands."

Our dauntless artist, however unfortunately denied, "learn[s] to forget that anyone was duty-bound to offer him assistance," and becomes "responsible for his own behavior once more."

I will donate $100 to the first arts nonprofit that uses the above as a mass appeal. Try me.

Many thanks to Walser, Searls, and the assiduous folks at Harper's.