[The author didn't address the letter formally, but it was written to Abby Turner.]Friday night.
I'm right ashamed of myself for not managing to get in a letter since last Friday but, to quote Pedro, it's been a "heck of a week." Last Sunday I started bravely to get several letters written, especially to Mrs. Carpenter and Winifred. There isn't a very good place to write polite letters in my room for that wash stand affair isn't comfortable as a desk. I tried to use my knee as I do for the scribbles I send you and home and the results were trying. It was so hot and moist and the paper got dripped on and wouldn't take ink in spots. It got hotter and hotter and at 6:30 we departed to see if we could find any diversion down town. When we got home we removed our clothes prepared for bed and sat on the porch. Monday evening I continued my letters to the Carpenter family and finally got them done.
Tuesday, looked promising for you, but after a strenuous day making agar, Dr. Graves invited Miss Newell and me out to Fontaine Ferry Park for dinner. Fine dinner, - nice chien and watermelon - and then he talked over the department affairs for next year. You people in So. Hadley haven't any idea how men's schools are hit by the war. Miss Newell and I will have to assist in the laboratories of the medical school. What was that course you said I ought to have? Clinical pathology? I'm going to assist in that one afternoon a week all next year. The fall term I'll probably have one half day a week on Bacteriology and I'm worried about the winter & spring terms for fear I'll get into the Pathology, that being Dr. Graves' pet subject. He is one of Mallory's men and good at it, too.
Tuesday night Mrs. Keiser claimed to have a sick head ache and had retired to bed in a dilapidated state before supper. Wednesday she was still sick but she told Miss Newell some things I'm not supposed to know though they were in the Louisville paper. Her son, private in the army, has had much interest in aeroplanes, - also period of insanity. During one of the fits he married and has now 2 little children. Last fall his interest in aeroplanes and a state of insanity occurred at the same time, so he donned an officer's uniform, went to one of the big manufacturing places of planes, got in without trouble, talked to everybody, learning all their private plans, gave a public lecture on his own ideas to people in the plant. Somehow or other they finally arrested him on charges of impersonating an officer, getting money, etc., and last Monday the trial came off. It seems he had been very heroic at a fire in the detention place where he was confined and people felt kindly toward him, but they couldn't let him loose with all the airship information so they sentenced him to 3 years in a Federal prison, - a hospital, I guess it would be. Of course Mrs. Keiser had a headache.
Well, we'd begun to recover from that Thursday when George, our standby in the laboratory was gone all the morning and came back saying he was leaving that night for a new job. He is the only one who knows where things are. Dr. Graves [is] very annoyed and I fear George and he didn't part on kindly terms. Miss Johnson, the stenographer, had to cut sections vigorously all the [...], and poor Pedro had everybodies' work to do for Daddy is on vacation. We all turned to, though, and Dr. Graves has some one in mind, - another woman, so we'll get straightened out yet. We are going to walk in the rain now. Much cooler.
Love to you,
Beryl.