[This letter can be dated around Jan 21, 1918 because the letter Abby mentions having written to other alums (transcribed here) is dated Jan 21, 1918.]Dear Dr. Clapp:-
I'm sending you a copy of the letter I've written some of the girls. I guess there isn't anything in it you don't know. I wish it were better. If there'd been time to really sit down and do it I could have made it better, I'm sure.
Your letter was fine - a comfort to my soul. And as for Mrs. Wilder's! I have to keep it a little longer, but I'll send it back anon. The girl who wrote the letter I sent you was Elizabeth Maynard when here, tall, fair, friendly. Took no zoo. only physiology. I have a suspicion she may have been in your Bible class. I hope your file of Llamaradas, with pictures, wasn't in Williston - but I fear it was. Everything was!
We are now on the verge of exams. I've made mine out today, and they are duplicated. We couldn't exist without that duplication. It was the first thing we ordered, I think.
Ann has gone to Springfield to hear Masefield. I had an invitation but already was bidden to Porter so couldn't go. There was a car off the track this P.M. in a snowdrift at the Lyman St. region and some people walked up from there in a wind blowing the snow in clouds, cold - oh, near to zero. No - we don't sit on the porch and knit up here, and we need our steam hat. The coal situation is as bad as it's painted. South, Pearsons Annex and S.A.H. closed. We had faculty meetings in the music building. You should have heard the music which accompanied Mr. Warbeke's prayer! 'Twas very jerky - and so was he. One of the men (new Mr. Dickerman) knits!
The little pictures of your house are cunning. I'd love your trees. I'm glad it's so comfortable. Also glad your Woods Hole house isn't robbed. Please thank Miss Mary for the pictures - and give my love to both your sisters. My mother would send her love too, I know. She enjoyed the pictures, both Xmas and these, much.
Oh, dear - I'm low in my mind. I want to teach better. It seems to me I do a bum job. I wish there were a decent way for the war to stop, so we could begin to get readjusted. Instead there's the feeling that all sorts of dreadful things are ahead, and for an uncertainly long time.
Good night - and always I love you. I wish you were here, except that it's such a horridly cold winter.