[The author didn't address the letter formally, but it was written to Abby Turner.]
University Court
417 West 118th StreetSunday.
This is a "fire sale" on paper - my last remains of N.Y. But I can endure it cheerfully for I've been glad all along that I came. My room rent is $18 per month + 1/3 the electric light bill and 1/3 the ice. My laundry so far has been $1 per week and may get lower. Seeing I caught any amount in the way of white waists and skirts in that dollar I don't complain. There was something like 4 waists and thru skirts and two changes of underwear in my last box, so you see you'd better move south where you don't have to spend all your salary for the minimum amount of laundry. All my coats - one a day - are done at the hospital. I really don't mind the food for it's usually well cooked, but I do miss the green vegetables. But Jensen's goods - while very pleasant - don't compare with Lee Lewis's at Klein's. They have the most marvelous creations and wonderfully good. Never struck anything like them in a northern candy store.
Today we went up to Jacob's Park - a natural wood with good automobile roads through it. We left the beaten path and plunged through the wilderness. I'll try to remember to enclose a few of our spoils. [A small packet of dried plants, still fragrant, were included with the letter.] We miss our 5 o'clock supper on such occasions but I feel like such a bloated bond holder with $70 attached to my front that I can't expect a meal less evening. A little later we'll sally forth for a sandwich.
I think I'll bet on Anna's marrying the rector after this year of matrimonial adventures. Miss Olmstead, the bacteriologist at Presbyterian Hospital in N.Y., a very charming Smith woman, married Michael Lippman last fall. He is part Jew, an artist for moving picture concerns.Miss Olmstead continues at the hospital. Also another of Miss Newell's friends, Frances Hunter, whom I met in N.Y. my first year, up and married Adolph Shoyer [?] last month. She is an aristocratic New Englander, he an Eastside Jew I believe, with not many years in this country - at least as far as his family history goes.
I'm surehe had his early training in Europe. He is doing extremely well for his age and is going to have charge of some of the work in Anatomy with Dr. Huntington at P. & S. next year. But the mixture does not seem pleasant to me. A rector seems mild in comparison, but he may not be as fascinating as Wolfe. I can't imagine though how a nice man, worth marrying, would play around with Mr. Scott. He was such an unclean man mentally, and reeked too often of alcohol.You ought to know I'm not objecting to your being intensive in your work. It's being so intense in any and every work all the time. It's making you tense so that you don't relax at all but dash about all the time at a fearful rate. Dearie, I don't mean to nag, but other people see it too, so I'm not writing this in any spirit of personal jealousy. I was sorry about the way your New York trip worked out. Somehow I've felt much lonesomer since then but it's all right. I'd have to start out by myself sometime and maybe it was just as well to start to Louisville as anywhere else. The first year and beginning of the second, with Eva as a guardian in your place because you knew her, I always felt as if you were backing me up in the work as it went along. Maybe it's time I backed up against a wall by myself now. Eva and I were talking about you a little when I was in N.Y. and she felt about your activity just as I do, that there isn't anybody who can stand the strain you have been going under. If you would only spend the time that damned mission class would take in relaxing a little and not having every minute taken, maybe such people or Dorothea would feel more comfortable about dropping in for a few minutes more frequently. She did like you but when you were always in a tear when she dropped in she got uncomfortable about appearing - so she didn't. I know I was home at a bad time for you so it isn't fair, perhaps, to feel as Dorothea did, but I certainly was annoyed to be left on your hands by the car that changed its schedule one of the nights I went to So. Hadley, and all the time you were in Amherst that last Sunday I knw the bluebooks were shouting at your sense of duty. Too bad your mother had to pass on her sense of duty to you. It would have been so much more convenient if she'd been like Pedro, who lets nothing spoil his peace of mind.
Well, dearie - this is rather critical. You'll have to remember how you felt after you and Ann had decided my company manners needed revision. I just am afraid for you to go on with all the outside things you do during the college year, because I don't see quite where you'll land after a year or two more of it.
Please don't forget I love you even if I'm saying things that aren't my business at all. You laugh at me when I try to get you to calm down, so you'll probably pay no heed to any written remarks. I'm sending them just the same, and my love with them.