179 Park Ave.,
Saranac Lake, N.Y.,
July 13, 1918.Bub dearest,
At last my weekly themes are off - I sat up till all hours of the night last night finishing them. So you see for a day or so now I'm quite care-free. You talk about your exams coming along. Well, even I do not escape quizzes. Have one sent to me every Friday. This last one took me over four hours to write out.
Bubby dear, your blue ink was just gorgeous!! But really, I like the purple ink just as well 'cause it seems more like you[.] You have used it so long. Anyhow I want your letters to be different from anyone elses [sic] and they are, dear, they are wonderful.
Wish I had some different colored ink now to make my letters more effective. I must make the best of what I have.
Dear Bub, my second self, the self that wants the gay whirl has only developed, Bub dear, since I've been at college. This I can say with certainty. The whole trouble lies right here - you've heard me speak of it a hundred times. You know, dear, all my life until I left home this last few years I've had absolutely
thenothing but the best influences - I had always been literally "brought up" on the Bible. Then off to college - Thrown in with absolutely all kinds - For my intimate friends, I have absolutely some of the finest girls at college but to be perfectly frank, Bub dear, I have others up there who are simply rank - Freshman year the girls used to laugh at me when I began to apostasize [sic] on some of my "home made" ideas of the Bible - Told me I was narrow, etc. As a result I've majored in Bible - The result? I've gotten absolutely lose [sic] in some of my ideas. Maybe, Bub dear, you won't believe it but I even this last year got so that for a time I argued with myself so that I was convinced that it was O.K. for a girl to drink and smoke as much as she wanted to. But after I met one girl up at school who had done a little bit of everything - Bub dear, I just saw how low I had gotten to be. Why? because from my extensive study of the Bible I had gotten so that I thought that everything in it was N.G. Why, we absolutely question everything - It was then I thought that the gay life would be fine - why, Bub, do you know I did things last year that had they been known I would have been expelled from college. Broke rules right and left and was glad of it. But Bub dear, through it all I did absolutely nothing except one thing which was not true to you. That I told you about - picking those Boobs up who came from Amherst - you remember - when I think of it now, dear, I don't know where I ever got that in me which let me do such a rank thing. That was where my awakening came - The Real true things of life, Bub dear, are deeper, they are underneath all this show & whirl - You have to have more than froth to live on - Bub darling, I am sincere in all I do toward you - I will be sincere toward everybody & everything for your sake as well as my own. I want you to love me Bub for all that I am and I want to be all - I don't want to have two natures and have you hate one of them - what is more I won't - Dear Bub, I love you more than I shall ever be able to tell but Bubly please don't think I want all this "foam of delight stuff" I loathe it - you know I do - what I want is "to stand on the shore missing many things - though maybe not missing all that is worth living for" & my own plain Bub - I wonder if much would be missed then?Good-night, dearest Boy -
With all my love,
Fran.