Yercaud, Shevaroy Hills, S. India.
Christmas Day, 1928.Dear Miss Turner,
Your good letter of Nov. 17th came today & helped the Christmas celebration very happily. For Barcroft, I thank you very, very much. It hasn't come yet, but I am most awfully glad to know that it is on the way. I'm sorry he didn't include hemocyanin. Cytachrome I've never heard of. I wish Dr. Redfield would write me even a word once. Then I should feel that I were a bit in touch with Harvard, not only with Dr. Benedict.
Dr. Benedict has certainly been good about writing. There were two long letters today from him, very helpful as always. He does not seem in any way to question the apparatus or technique & that has been a great comfort for I have needed assurance when my results have been so consistently low. I'm glad you told me your method of testing for soda lime for I've felt that it should be done more frequently. Mine must have left Collins last May. The lot I am using now is only the 3rd change (in a big gallon bottle) since I began work in August but I did let the last go too long as shown by the stimulated respiration of the last couple of subjects. I have tested by blowing through the soda lime bottle into lime water, but my lime water has not been freshly prepared & perhaps I have missed something then. I'll be more careful of that in the future. I mean to ask Dr. Benedict point blank about any possible defect in the apparatus which could cause the low results. In strictest honesty I do not think there is any fault - unless, as you suggest, it is the soda lime, but I certainly want to leave us possible room for doubt.
I'm glad to get the results on Vimela Appasaway. E. D'Lima I don't care so much about because I'm not touching the Eurasians here. You speak about the corrected H. & B. standard. Is that the old H. & B. minus 4%? I've been calculating all mine by Aub. DuB. so far, simply because I haven't had time for the longer calculations & I knew Dr. Benedict would have those done there anyway. Some day I'll get about it. Just now I'm scared over the prospect of two University lectures I'm to give on Jan. 18th & 25th. I was appointed by the University as "Reader" for this year which brings the privilege of membership in the Academic Council & the obligation of delivering at least 2 lectures open to anyone in the University, with the aim of stimulating research. There are many such Readers, most of them Professors who teach Honours work, but there is only one from each of the two women's colleges. There will be no B.A. students with a background to understand metabolism but I hoep some of the medics who have done physiology will come.
It's hard to believe that the year is nearly over. The Vertebrate work I've done in quite a new way this year, entirely comparative only with more details of different groups than we had in comparative at Holyoke. The systemic work I've left to their own reading except for some class review & discussion that I plan for this last term. I tremble for the results. If their exams turn out to be entirely systemic the girls will probably curse me, perhaps justly.
My good assistant leaves next year & I see no sign of a good successor. It is only because I've been able to give her so much responsibility that I've had decent time for metabolisms.
This has been a strange Christmas day. I'm in the hills with my nice Danish Larsens, in their wee cottage in the jungle where we see no Europeans at all & very few Indians. It is a lovely place, not so high as Kodai nor so striking, but very beautiful. We woke this morning smothered in cloud, a sea of cloud below & cloud dripping from everything we could see or touch. It has been like that all day & when we almost slid down a steep rocky trail to the Christmas service in the little Danish mission church in the valley 800 feet below, the mists drove across our faces & drenched us but it was beautiful. We've done Christmas in Danish fashion as far as was possible in this environment. I thot of you as Dr. Larsen & I scoured the woods for a good tree & remembered a similar very happy search with you in So. Hadley. Mostly we've had lovely weather with gorgeous tramps over the hills in the mornings & at sunset time; & then cozy evenings by lamplight with Dr. L. reading aloud. I've helped him some with some writing he is doing & consider it a great privilege, for he is the missionary whose thinking & whose life I admire most of all I know. There are few who are truly both saints & scholars but he is both.
Please do send me one of your pictures even if you don't think it is good. Thank you for thinking of me in that connection. I want one awfully.
D. Elizabeth has been a pill about writing since she's been back but I expect she is very busy & I certainly haven't writen her much. But I do long for letters. Please give my love to her & Isabel & to any of my other friends you may see. I am so sorry about Miss Smith's brother-in-law. You must be missing her very much.
It is 10.30 & our candles are doing their last flickers. Good night dear Miss Turner, & very much love to you, from
EleanorP.S. Toward the end of November I sent you a brass lamp which I hope reached you safely. The big bowl holds oil from which you ladle enough for the little bowl that holds the wick. Any vegetable oil should do. We used salad oil successfully in Brookline. A bit of twisted rag serves as a wick in this country.
Our week here is up on the 28th, alas! Then I am going to Kandy in Ceylon with Soma Seneviratne a nice Singalhese [sic] colleague whom D. Eliz will tell you of.