[The Dec 1917 Williston fire, and Frances Botsford's hiring, both help establish the year of this letter as 1918.]Mar. 2
Dear Dr. Clapp:-
I ought to start for dinner, but I'll begin a letter to you for a minute first. We've been over to Miss Lathrop's place for rats, and who do you think is carrying it on? That nice Mrs. Gray. She lives about a quarter of a mile beyond - says she knows you well! She told me how she used to have Miss Lathrop with her Sundays and holidays, how she took the care of the beasts when Miss L- had to go to the hospital &c. Miss Lathrop had pernicious anemia - her hemoglobin was only 1/4 normal when she went to the hospital. Nothing did any good, of course. The business had been running behind because of high price of grain &c., and Mrs. Gray is trying to get it in shape. She feels it a patriotic charge not to let it slump now, for so many of the beasts go to Rockefeller. She has had many letters most appreciative of Miss Lathrop's work. Leo Loeb sent money for flowers for her grave and Mrs. Gray is going to get them on Memorial Day. Edith Chapin (whom you and your sisters will doubtless remember at Miss Thomas') still cares for the rats. She talked with a good deal of intelligence today but I must say with peculiar utterance! It was a lovely day to go over - the kind of day when the first blue-bird ought to sing - but it didn't. The walking was beastly but we didn't mind. Mary Oliver wore a fairly dirty white skirt because it was short. She slipped on some ice concealed beneath soft mud, and she was a sight!
Miss Purington slipped last week and has a sprained ankle - medium bad. She's out some, but it troubles her a lot. Mrs. Purington gains slowly. Emily
wrotetold me she can stand long enough to be dressed, but she hasn't been as far as the kitchen since last November.Can't remember when I wrote you last. My cousin Sam sent me 100.00 a while ago. I offered him the chance to give 5000.00 to the dep't - but I got what I expected. It'll buy some trifles. The scissors we used to get for 40¢ now cost 1.25[.] It seems trying to spend 75.00 right out and get only five dozen little scissors. My worst fear is that nobody will want to use those scissors after we get them.
Mary Oliver goes to medical school next year, I think. Anyhow she leaves here, unless I'm in too bad a hole. I'm asking Frances Botsford to come back, but she doesn't say anything and I'm afraid she isn't coming! This money situation is the limit. Chris had $1650 offered her in Washington, and she's absolutely green at the job! How can we get anybody to teach when that is the alternative? And yet, the college has not the money to offer very much more than now. The whole thing is terribly upset. We need good teaching, but nobody seems to make any allowance for it, somehow.
I think we have silenced Mr. Sturgis, our great consulting architect, who is himself planning (worse luck) the temporary building. He wanted little windows with 24 panes each. We have gotten the windows some larger (not enough, but that's partly the limitation of the permanent uses) and on the last visit we got our four panes, I think. These episodes with R. Clipston Sturgis, Miss Woolley, Mr. Adams, Miss Stokey and Ann are rich. I have so many times wished for you. We're all cheerful - but we hold our ground. I wished you were here last time to talk about the nature of the ground in that part of the world - the present site of the Rink. I have a feeling the place may be queer - but I couldn't remember the Gym. The row about Wilder was clear in my mind, how they had to do some of the foundation over, but I think the Gym went up while I was in Phil. You know it is queer to be the only one to remember things as they were - e.g. that field of deep grass with a little brook - with none too dry borders - where the Gym. is &c. It was news to R.C.S. that the college sewerage was higher up than he is putting his building - which is a bit awkward, but they talk very glibly of septic tanks and the sterile nature of their effluent. Oh yes, we had another great authority at the last meeting, one Eveleth, a consulting engineer I suspect. He seemed interested in the weight of the flour barrels later to be put on the floors of this building, in radiators, in septic tanks, &c. He's connected somehow with the new physics building at Wellesley.
Mr. Hovey was up to lecture on his arctic experiences last week. He asked for you. His lecture was interesting in material though not in manner. He has grown grey and seems older, but yet there is much of the familiar man there. 'Twas an awful experience for him and I wonder he came through with any spirit at all. Think of having more than two whole years just cut out of your life like that - of watching a whole summer for a ship that never came - oh, 'twas deadly. You know how fond he is of children. I judge he spent a good deal of his time playing with the Eskimo youngsters. He had fine pictures.
I have a birthday gift for you, but I'm not going to send it to Florida. It's a little picture for Woods Hole. I'll give it to you when you come back.
The next Quarterly is to have an article by Miss Edwards on "The Beginnings of Williston Hall" which seems to me mighty nice, and one by me on the fire which is different! I wish I could have done it even as well as my powers permit, but it was so scrappy. It's full of interruptions, and they show!
Have you heard that ΦΒΚ has taken some of the Mt. H- faculty in? I forget whether I wrote you of this great honor. "Sister Nell" is now shepherding us into the first meeting after our election, next Tuesday. She is so funny about it, it's so deadly serious[.]
But I'm too sleepy to write any more except that I love you.
Oh yes - I open my eye to say that Grace Bacon and Miss Stokey's missionary brother whose wife died last spring are in a suspicious state! G.B. is giving missionary talks in Holyoke. How's that?
I may go to N.Y. for a few days in vacation - partly because it would be some of a relief to get away from this struggle for a bit, and partly to attend to some things I can do there. The days are amazingly strenuous. I wish they were longer and that I didn't get so sleepy when I ought to work.
Good night - there's a lot more I could say. My mother is pretty well.
April 21