[The Dec 1917 Williston fire, and Feb 4 as a Monday, both help establish the year of this letter as 1918.]Dear Dr. Clapp:-
You're altogether too good to me. Why should you send me such a big birthday present when it's a year for no presents at all? I don't deserve it. But I thank you much. I'll have to meditate on what to do with it.
Elizabeth Adams has been here a few days. She is such a fine one - and I think the student-volunteer idea is now out of her head. I'm so glad she comes back next year. Ann needs her. I think Ann has the work pretty well planned now for the change to the larger major. I'm asking Frances Botsford to come back next year to help me. Mary Oliver goes to medical school, I think. Frances is young - but I want somebody I know. Oh, I wish there were somebody a little wiser and older available, but there isn't. I miss Anna Yates so much. And seems to me I can't ask for more money to pay now - the college is in a mighty hard place. Frances (if she comes!) will make me charts &c - and she has done well at Goucher.
"They say" we burned wood at the power house today - some wood came, anyhow. Yale has closed for a week, I hear - maybe we shall have to. It was 12° below this morning, with a high wind, 2° below at one o'clock. I stayed up at Porter for lunch - regarding which I might tell of an episode with Mrs. Smith, who is being most unreasonable. Ann chastened her this p.m. She telephones me to say I'm always "as welcome as the sun"! Ann felt her welcome somewhat peculiar and labored with her. Of course I was only amused at her behavior - but some one else might not have understood, and no one could tell who might be the next recipient of peculiar remarks. Mrs. Celestia is certainly a curious mixture - I think I'll go and shine upon her again soon!
The second semester has begun. There has been one period of lab. all around - B5 over in Dwight in a big basement room with new tables and stools, quite pleasant. It's queer to have girls ask for pins and realize suddenly that there are none! I was able to get absorbent cotton and surgical gauze (to use as cheese cloth) yesterday (Monday) at the drugstore, since they were "medical supplies" - but some other desires were frowned upon on Monday! The Harvard apparatus was shipped a week ago and hasn't come yet. We need it much. I don't know from day to day what we'll teach next but we hope to keep going. Absolute dearth of frogs in N.Y. and they are frozen on the Chicago trip, now so slow. I'm going to try to get turtles through - and lay in implements wherewith to kill them! I remember the struggles I had at Harvard with Louis to help. Turtles are tough!
There was a concert in Holyoke tonight but I didn't go. Last night Miss Cady (the elegant Miss Cady) and Miss Maher the nurse spent the night down by the greenhouse stuck in a snowdrift in a trolley car. They came up this morning in the funeral carriages assembling for the last rites of John Shea's son-in-law! It was not windy tonight - but somehow the game didn't seem worth while to me. I've been reading a book - first time since the fire!
I have ten new microscopes - Bausch & Lomb. That fixes me in that respect for a few years, I think, though I want an oil immersion lens or two. These are like our last ones which have been good. A little glass ware has come. Tomorrow I decide how much I dare gamble on in instruments and glassware. We lost so many instruments - and they're sadly expensive now - but we have to get what we can.
I'm putting in a few prints of some pictures I took the first days after the fire. [no longer with the letter] It's all gone now - clear down to the foundation, but I'm glad to have these pictures. It still seems as if I could go in and put my hands on those familiar shelves - the skeletons, the slides, the books, the apparatus. I can't believe them gone, though of course I know they are. Lu's and Ann's girls are using some books which have come through - no covers, burned edges, very sad looking, but possible for a little until others come. I've seen in this heap of remains of the library a few fragments of our writing, not enough to make any sense - just enough to recognize and to give me a jerk. There were also hauled out an occasional page of my own notes at Chicago, at Woods Hole, at Philadelphia, at Wellesley, here. I don't see how there could have been a page or two of each - but there they were! No good, of course - they go on to the dump - but they served to remind me of what I'll have to do if ever there's a chance to study again. I wonder if I ever shall be able to work enough to get the degree or the equivalent thereof - the world is all so queer now. I've never felt the need of it so much but there's nothing to be done about it just now - that's perfectly clear.
We have some big storage cases on the south side of Room 4 in Mary Lyon Hall, and the B2 girls are nestled up close to those windows on the north side, to get what light they can. Thanks be the sun has shown [sic] these first two days when the girls were beginning to work really (we just did makeshifts before exams). The dark days will be impossible, almost. But there's no other place. If only the apparatus gets through tomorrow we can keep some logical plan - otherwise we're all upset. The Harvard medical slides are a godsend, for they're in order. The others which have come are hard to get acquainted with, and only one of a kind, mostly. You know we have the loan of 37 sets of most 100 each from Harvard? The sets the medics use in histology? I can fall back on those at various times, and I guess I'll have to. Lu is using them in her histology. The others from Dr. Gage (fine ones and many) and from Mabel Hedge, E. Wallace and other girls are gifts but hard to use just now.
My last candle is burning low. I must stop. I'm glad you're escaping this unusually cold winter. It is queer how cold it can stay, week after week. The coal situation is so much more serious, especially for the poor folks. I've put in a whole cord of wood for nobody knows what is ahead - and it's long to spring. We have only a few days' supply of coal in this house at a time. My mother's room has been warm every day but one, thanks be.
Here is B. Martin's letter. [no longer with the letter]
Good night and lots of love to you. I'd like to go to walk with you.
Feb. 5