A Letter Written on May 29, 1931

Mount Holyoke College
South Hadley, Massachusetts

Department of Physiology

May 29, 1931.

Dear Miss Turner,

I had hoped to include a copy of my request for the department appropriation for next year with this letter, but if I do it can't go out on the mail this afternoon, so I'll plan to send it along in a day or two.

I hope you got my cable about sending the money, altho you may be curious about the extra $200. That was an extra for Pflüger's beyond the $200. which was appropriated to the library for it. Mr. Stackpole did not want to carry it over into next year's budget, and Miss Copeland made the suggestion (that I had been hoping for) that it could be sent directly to you. I should think you might pick up some of those earlier files of Pflüger's with it, but if you would rather get back files of the Biochemical Journal or something else instead, you are not in the least tied down, except that it was asked for Pflüger's. I think I will not ask for a bit library appropriation for books for next year since this $200. really was velvet for us, and as far as I can make out from your past budgets, it comes from some special sum that will get used up eventually. Besides, the Carnegie fund is giving us help on the side of textbooks and such. I told you, didn't I, that the surgical papyrus came last fall --- gift of Mrs. Williams ---- and we have used it with great delight this year? You are going to love it.

As to the delay in getting the money off to you. I sent your note and one from myself to the President right away, but I guess she was off on one of her trips. Any way, I Had [sic] written to Miss Copeland to follow it up a second time when your letter came. Then the possibility of your getting the $200. for the journals came up, and Miss C. wanted to wait until Pres. Woolley and Mr. Stackpole both approved sending off that much to you. The chief difficulty was that we seem to be nearer the edge than we are ---- financially --- because the student payroll and the $158. for the lab manual got put on our account when we had not planned for it. But they approved all right and we are sound financially. In fact, I am going to buy a thing or two more this spring, in order to come out more even.

Florice came through with 86 on her general exam and seemed to have a right nice time taking it, as well as studying for it. We could not find your general exam of last year, even with much search, but we went ahead and made one according to our own lights. Thelma got her thesis in all right, and it seems to me a rather nice piece of work that she has done. Esther gave out at the last minute, in spite of the fact that I could obtain for her from Miss Putnam and the rest of the committee very favorable extensions on both the thesis and the general exam. Everybody has been afraid that she would go all to pieces physically, and anybody can see that the girl is tired to death, after the worry about her aunt and all. She was afraid she would get below B in her phssc physical chemistry or flunk her general exam if she pushed the thesis enough to finish it. It seemed to me a pity not to finish when she was so near the end. Her charts were all done and photographed by Mr. Kinney, and she had her tables all typed. The data have been put together for weeks. But she was terribly slow in writing up the results and the historical introduction; both girls let that the latter slide in spite of my urging it to be done by spring vacation. Esther really will do a better job by waiting until next Founder's Day to get the degree, for she is just about all in now, and she does not seem to work to good advantage. The things needs [sic] a little mellowing too, I think, for it all came in so late to me. I did not push her because I knew what she had been laboring under, and also I knew that the pressure of time would be enough to push anybody along.

Here is the registration for next year:

Beginning physiology .....................	16	(plus freshmen)
Advanced survey ..........................	3
Circulation and Respiration ..............	10
Nervous System ...........................	7
Chem. Physiology .........................	3

If Ann Smith flunks out, as she is always in danger of doing, that will be one less in circulation and in the nervous system. She is a very nice child, and I am fond of her, but she is dumm. [sic]

I feel terribly that the advanced survey course has slumped so, and I suppose it is my fault. I wish I knew what the trouble is. I am wondering whether it might not be better next year to try to combine the lab for that with the baby physiology lab as much as possible, for there is no sense in our duplicating right straight through becauseof [sic] those 3 people. For instance, we might start with the general physiology for the advanced survey while the baby phy. people were doing the anatomy and histology that comes at the beginning. The difficulty is that they never take kindly to the gen. phys. stuff in with the survey course. Won't you be meditating on this sort of arrangement in general? I think that McIntire, our assistant from Brown, will have had more of a physiological background than Schott, the Oberlin one. I had thought of the Brown one as porobably being best for the advanced course. We might do this: to have one assistant for each course as before, but to have the advanced phys. assistant plan for having enough extra solutions etc. made up so as to lighten the burden of the other one. Neither of them could help you out much in the nerv, System course probably and you want to do the circ. yourself, (except where you will let me help out) don't you?

I slipped up on writing to A. H. THomas to see whether they have the small size tubing of which you sent me samples. I forgot about it until I was just going over your letter again. They have none in the catalog, but the catalog is awfully old. I have cut the tubes in half and are keeping half of each as a sample, and sending the other back to you. I'll plan to hunt around until I can get some, because you will not get this letter until you are about ready to leave Copenhagen and will have no time for it. If I should find later on that it would be absolutely impossible to fill the order in this country, I will send you an S.O.S. call to see if you can find some in Germany.

If that is all I slip up on these last days I'll be lucky. I am about at the state where I will have to keep a list of all the things that have to be done. There is likely to be something that I won't have remembered about to do, I'm afraid. Just now, there's the budget, which I had intended to send over for your approval befor[e] it went in, but I did not get it under way in time. I just remembered that I have to plan to have our next year's assistants petition for summer credit. The girl who goes to spr Cold Spring Harbor may get it, but I don't hardly think the organic chemistry girl can.

The compressed air comes through the pipes like a breeze. You can have double what you asked for, easily. It will cost us $35 $36. for the pipe and labor, and I will put that on the budget. Refinishing the desk tops will be more, alas. I am asking for more stenographic help for you for next year because there is likely to be another stenographer who can be made to go out to one's office. That has not yet been announced, but I wormed the information out of the stenographic bureau, because you need it, goodness knows.

I've been no good on correspondence lately, but I guess I am "honoring you more in the breach" as it were by sticking to business here. I think things are coming along pretty well, and I do hope you are not wrathy at me for not writing you more often about everything that is happening. I never dreamed that the M.A. theses could take so much of everybody's time. That reading week before the final exams was a life-saver.

Give Gene Landis my regards and tell him I hope that he finds Russia agreeable. Perhaps he has already started.

Must run off and mail this now.

Much love to you,
Charlotte.

P.S. But it is a good game. - this running the dep't. I've enjoyed it. C.H.

Esther has been to see Dr. Soma Weiss about a job for next year, but so has a chem. M.A. and he wants a chemist! [frown face]

H. Larrabee wants to know whether you got her Xmas card & a stencil that she sent about that time. You wish that you had not heard, didn't you?

Alaska trip is all off for me. Aunt Jessie is going, with one of her contemporaries as a partner - I'm afraid I really did not want much to go! Nothing in sight for me but Woods Hole!