Sunday. [Jun 9, 1918]
I wish you were down here to be talked to. So much happens in a short time. Dr. Noguchi, in these two days, has been perfectly splendid and the laboratory is the closest to a scientific Heaven that I've ever encountered - clean, quiet and an abundance of everything. No more does JImmy May dampen my ardor by saying there isn't any anything and he doesn't know when there will be. If I ask Dr. Noguchi for anything he himself shows me where it is or gets a boy to bring in a drawer full of the desired article. And Dr. Noguchi is so generous with his time and courteous in suggestions. Yesterday I set up something like 140 tubs and he went through every one.
The morning I got there he introduced me to a nice girl, Dr. Rudach (sp?) and she introduced me to a number of soldiers who were taking a course with Dr. Noguchi. About half an hour afterwards the order came for them to leave and in twenty minutes or so all but one man had gone. Dr. Rudach is an M.D. from California but has been in the laboratory only a week. Somehow I feel if her interest were less divided between serology and men it would be better, and if I'm sick I think I'll have somebody else - but she's friendly.
There are interesting things every day, such as being sent on a chase after the dining room and landing in every place but the right one. Then on finally reaching the spot I was shown to a table occupied by military uniforms and lab coats whose conversation to me was "Tea?" "Have some bread?" The waitress tapped me on the wrist and told me to save my napkin if I was coming again, so I promptly stuffed it into my pocket and departed. yesterday I sat at lunch with some youngsters who are taking the clinical chemistry course and the one next me talked quite politely. I have an idea he was from the Univ. of Toronto but I didn't tell him that my only connection with that was through Lucy who may have been getting married at the moment I was talking to the boy.
My choicest stunt was one I performed yesterday. It was late - 6:30 - when I started to leave the laboratory. It's a bad building to get round in for the different parts connect through subterranean passages. Last night I walked downstairs and saw a door that opened onto a side street. It was much nearer to go out that way than to go through the basement, up several stairs and out the main building, so I opened the door and went out on what seemed to be an automobile drive. As soon as I had walked far enough to see toward the end of the drive, it was obviously a court yard, enclosed on one side by the building, on three two by that handsome iron fence that has spears on each picket and on the fourth by a high stone wall with another iron fence in addition, thus
I returned to my door. It had locked itself. I tried a gate in the picket fence. Also locked, evidently always was. Visions came to me of staying there all night for those spear heads are several feet above ground and too pointed to run the danger of having to stop to rest on them. My only hope was the fence beside the stone wall. It wasn't very high, 3 12 ft. perhaps, and I couldn't see where I'd get if I did cross it for a hedge and terrace cut off the view. Well, I looked up and down the building to see if I could see anybody to let me out and there wasn't a soul, so I carefully deposited my bag over the fence, grabbed hold of one of the spears of the big fence and lightly (!) vaulted over the small fence onto the front lawn.
Thus did I depart and was overjoyed to find that I could, by way of a terrace, go out the usual exit. There was no more excitement until a man down at 110th street tried to beat me to a bus. I heard him thundering along behind me and immediately broke into a mad gallop. We dashed down the road neck and neck for some distance and reached the bus at the same moment.
I do not know yet when I am to go on. Dr. Noguchi suggested it might be possible to stay on more than a week but whether Dr. Graves would approve or not I don't know. It makes the ticket matter all the more entertaining for it was sometime before I could feel sure they would give me a 10 day stopover and now I may not want to go inside that time. I have Charlotte's room so Eva isn't having perfect peace and quiet - but I don't believe I bother her much for I haven't gotten home to dinner either night I've been at the institute and I was gone yesterday before she got up. She has a perfectly horrid cold and acts sick.
You'll be starting off with Dr. Clapp before it's time for another letter to reach you so maybe I'd not write again this week. I've forgotten when you get home again but it's sometime the middle or last of the next week, isn't it? Have a good time and get rested up a little if there's time.
With much love to you,
Beryl.