Esther Loring Richards, M. D.
1316 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MarylandThanksgiving Eve.
Lady, dear
I have received your various messages & enjoyed them very much. You have a marvelous ability to adapt yourself but have a good time in doing so. There is so much to tell you that I hardly know where to begin.
I spent the summer here in town except for week ends in the Blue Ridge Mts. The heat was terrific but we didn't mind it so much as the drought. As you have heard the latter is unprecedented all over the States. And even tho' we have had some rain this fall it has not begun to replenish stores & wells. If we do not have snow this winter the land cannot product another season. In Sept. I went up to College for 3 days. A friend motored me from N.Y.C. to So. Hadley. We returned via western Mass. & down the Hudson, staying one night en route. Except for the dust the drive was delightful. We stayed at Faculty House in the guest room. It was melancholy to see Charlotte Haywood in your rooms, but she was very nice. I attended classes one day just to review my youth. Went to hist. of art one A.M. with Florence Foss, & then to Ann Morgan's baby zoo. She certainly can make a course interesting; talked to them on the art of collecting seciments. Then I went to hear Amy Hewes. I sat in the back of the room & she didn't know me till I went up afterwards & introduced myself. She's the same old girl who was so amusing in 1910. Miss Woolley was out of town, but I left a card at her office and wrote a note. I had hoped to hear her bad [...] again. I got in on a musical morning & heard Mr. Hammond play. The worship probably was the same, but I got quite a jolt to hear the the pandemonium of voices that kept up till he began to play. I sat in the front row of Mary Lyon center, & girls entered by walking over the backs of the seats and crashing down beside me. My thoughts went back to that figure entering by the side door in her black gown & sitting before us, & then rising to say "The Lord is in this Holy Temple. Let all the world keep silence before Him." Well I like it better than the new mode of entrance, but this preference is a sign of age.
The fall has been busy. The Chief had a fall from his horse & got a concussion but it did not permanently incapacitate him. He did not leave Balto. during the summer thinking that his law suit might come to trial (att. is suing him for $50000 because his son committed suicide on the [...] wd). The suit keeps getting postponed as law suits have a way of doing, & hasn't yet been tried. It's hard on the disposition.
We are swarming with graduate students from all over the U.S. and Gt. Britain. Some of them are OK & others are awful. I have a full time assistant in the Disp. this year - a dandy man. Dr. Diethelm, our former Resident, is back as an associate & a great help. This fall I have been scrambling around in N.Y. Phil. & Wash. Hugh. Mearns (author of Creative Power) Prof. of Educ. at N. Y. Univ. & I have been enlightening Phil. in 7 lectures on Discipline. The White House Conference last week in Wash. was a somewhat noisy affair. Haven Emerson & Grace Abbott went to the mat over whether the Children's Bureau should remain with the Dept. of Labor or be transferred to the U.S. Public Health service. I think it should not be part of any bureau but should have a Cabinet chair all to itself. It has eaten its meals in the nursery long enough.
I suppose you have heard about the economic depression over here. It is sure serious. There is no business, & one is not used to it as they are abroad. The rich are poor, & the poor are poorer. Every city is organized to keep its starving unemployed. Meanwhile we cuss tariff & republicanism & all the rest of it, & get a certain amount of thrill out of our efforts. It seems to me as if everyone is trying to get some glory for himself & his pet scheme of salvation.
I go out to Cleveland the night of the 4th. Arrrive the A.M. of the 5th. Speak that night & leave on the midnight for N.Y.C. for another engagement. The Colby Clan [?] is giving me a luncheon at which I say a few words. And the Social Workers a dinner just before I speak. The sleeper will look good to me.
My dear love to you.