It came in 15 days!
from So. Hadley to Beirut.
Fancy that.American University
Beirut, Syria
December 17, 1935.Dear Miss Turner,
Your letter came today.
I am sitting in an armchair in front of an oil stove at 10.30 PM waiting for a syrup full of orange peels & grapefruit peels to reach 220°. I begin to question the thermometer. It should long since have reached that level and it hovers at 215°. I doubt it because I used it to make a fondant. The soft ball stage came well before 238° - said by the books to be that stage.
At 218° I shall quit and hope the peels will be properly candied. Wilma Stevens, who is helping, has gone home finally. Our program is to present some dozen families with Christmas baskets of homemade sweets all the way from chocolate peppermints thru fudge to spiced almonds.
It is a nice way to take care of Christmas, time consuming, but not too expensive. The pièce de resistance is to be a centerpiece of a half a candied grapefruit, or a 2/3 orange. It is now crowding 216.
It was so nice of you to write a letter that gets here ahead of time. I find that I write practically no letters and when I do they seem devoid of ideas. About two weeks ago when they should have gone aft, I was getting ready for a book review. It is some time since I did one and knew nothing of the proper method short of making a resumé chapter by chapter and interspersing quotations. It took a fairly large pad of paper and a lot of time and resulted in a 2 hour creation, even with last minute slashing. Hans Zuisser Rats Lice and History. It was worth spending time on if only to discover how seldom one reads a book thoroughy. Book review club is rather fun - especially when one's triennal contribution is just completed[.] 237 - near 238. [sic]
The Boston interlude sounds well planned and various. I am sorry about the bursitis and glad you commit the matter of diagnosis to one of the great. It would not have been pleasant to go thru the tonsillectomy only to discover the other later. Did I ever tell you about the way they used to admit children on Wednesdays for removal of tonsils & adenoids. They discharged them on Fridays. One Friday one of the more conscientious of the internes was peering thru the series of throats before he wrote the discharge notes, and discovered a cleft palate!
The music sounds good. I rather favor pianists. Our music here is not remarkable. The head of the music schoolcomposes and one has to listen to his compositions & they are awful. Once in a blue moon we see a movie that is worthwhile. Last month I saw "The Barretts" in French!
It is 218° nearly 219°
Boston on a Thanksgiving weekend! Schrafft's - I miss the table at 43d St Schraffts where I used to eat with 3 newspaper men now and again.
Your words on my doings were fine. While I washed dishes tonight I meditated on the charm and the power of words and how the things said by a speaker are so much more than the same things said. The skill with which you say what you mean without reaching the meaning with words is a satisfaction to me. I may be wrong but my evenings impression is that you can see value in my sticking to the ship here. I am afraid of being a rolling stone, and you may remember the old verse
Quoting
may be
erroneous.
And knowing I could not travel both
I looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth"
Then took the other as just as fair -"It is 221° - Oft it comes & I'll continue in bed.
"And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Tho both that morning equally lay
In ways no step had trodden black
I kept the first for another day
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back."There is more, but I've forgotten it and this much says enough. The scholarly career was a sight perhaps back in 1921, tho I'm not sure it ever had a chance after the six months my brother Phil was there in Dickinson Hospital. I spent the weekends the first six months of Freshman year watching student nurses and the rest has followed.
I'm glad Billie Conrad is mounting. She will arrive so to speak.
Yet I'm not sure that it isn't more interesting to teach 10 nationalities in one classroom than to deal all with Americna girls. I suppose I told you - Greeks, Bulgarians, Russians, Persian, Armenian, Turkish, Syrian, Egyptian, Swiss, Iraqui - Moslems, Jewish, and Christian - all laughing at an American funny story and all groaning together over a long assignment and all being scolded for defacing the furniture. I really do love them.
My family grows further away. Ellen is a young lady, studying Latin and writing stories and going to dancing school.
Katharine I am watching. She is getting a public education - briefing home A's and reading everything. She is 8. Maybe she'll start right into an academic life from the first. I hope I can help her have a try at Holyoke. That would be only fair to Miss Edwards.
By the way, I'm attending Hàrald Ingholt's course in Archeology of Syria. Simply thrilling subject. We've been to one dig.
It is 11.30. I must stop. The Hittites were nonchalante and their lions like dopey dogs.
Next morning -
A letter from my new sister in law with pictures of my twin brother's daughter. The sister in law took on a handful, in Theo and a three year old child. It begins suspiciously.
Lauren, the news man, is writing a book with another news-man on aviation, written for children.
Do you suppose Miss Warner - would be interested in a letter written by Miss Edwards on the acquiring of the whale. It begins "when I arrived in So. Hadley, the museum contained two butterflies and a rattle snake" It seems to me that is a Frances Lesterish opening.
I must stop. Many thanks, always. By the way, don't come in 1936-37, but do come in 1937-8. It looks difficult from that end, but up to now, everything is easy from this end.
I have not yet been to the Cedars. I'll save it.
Love
Katy