MondayDear Margaret:
Harriet's letter is touching and I will write her as I suppose you intended me to do, and also I return her letter [no longer with this one], not so much to get it off my mind as to write to you when I ought to be abed.
It is a magical night, soft, fragrant, full of love. Elizabeth and her red roses might be abroad in it, and all the lovers' ghosts are surely wandering. There was a magical time before dark, sunset and rainbows and showers all going on together, and almond trees flowering in the instant before one's eyes as if seraph wings were passing through them.
How is we going to live through the heaviest work of the term in this wonderment, and how does one keep one's spirit fit for flowers to bloom for
whenthis "elective" atmosphere is fit to choke me? But you mustn't be restless. That is n't your line though it may be Ada's. She will be a Bolshevick someday, and its haven for her is good but not for you.Mrs. Hunt and I lead a wondrous lively country walk Sunday and I think she enjoyed this new strange Wellesley, new enough and different not to recall too much of the old. She liked the Tower [?], I think, and it and everyone, of course, loved her. - Do try to see her some, Maggie. She loves to talk things over and I don't believe she does very much with Ellen.
The parents write rapturously of their arrival in Chicago and of finding the little apartment all smilingly ready for them - furniture unpacked and polished and placed, pantry stocked, beautiful Sunday dinner on their own table, flowers everywhere and the children radiantly happy over the surprise they had so lovingly prepared. I have not had in years such a happy letter from Mother. It seems as if the experiment must work out for their ultimate good.
Darling dear, I must to bed but my love and thought are you-ward,
Yours, Laura.
Wednesday
Dear Margaret:
I almost echo Bertha's phrases about the discouraging adorableness of your letters. the last was a perfect dear so utterly and serenely you, - and yet I can't put you into a shrine howsoever worthy you are of it. But I wonder very solemnly sometimes how your special goodness can be so unmarred, so much clearer and simpler, when it is destroyed [?] the rest of us are. - Don't bother to try to understand all this. I know what I am talking about and I want you to go on forever and forever being a light in darkness!
The parents to whom I
telepaphtelephoned Saturday are now, so far as I know, in Chicago, and Mrs. Hunt is here. I dined with her at the Chases last night and we all delighted in her. She is already beguiled into staying over until Sunday with me, and I must engineer some kind of a pretty party for her Saturday. I think I'll have it at the Guest House and be really stylish for once!Did I write you about Anita's being here for her vacation week. She went to Springfield for that last Saturday and I am afraid found the usual domestic upset at home. Of course I have not heard since and probably won't for another half year or so.
We had a well merited vacation Friday and most of us went to the parade. It was a great show and a good mob. I really enjoyed the mob and it alone kept
upone from freezing as one stood.Nell's all to brief visit was a great treat though I felt convicted more than usual of the vise of stupidity. However seeing her bucked me up to giving a Trojan legend for Mrs. Hodder's Roman History class which now that it is over, I may admit, was rather good fun.
Leaving you to admire the coherence. etc, of this valuable but most loving epistle, I am
Yours - never more so
Laura