Sherborn, Mass.
July 27, 1920.Lady dear,
It is given to few people to have the privilege of real friendship. My life has been peculiarly rich in this respect, rich beyond all that I diserve. [sic] For eleven years I have had rare fellowship with you. I have shared with you my hopes and ambitions and discouragements always knowing that you understand and appreciate my motives as well as my failures. Your love and confidence are things to live up to. I loved you in college and appreciated your worth to some extent, but the years have lifted you up beyond that early vision. The college student is bound to idealize, and as truly doomed to become disillusioned with the passage of time. I have had that experience. What would I give today if I could have those feelings of inspiration that swayed me for three and a half years as I listened and watched at the feet of Miss Woolley & Dr. Clapp. Today I have to judge them in the light of my experience with the weaknesses of human nature. I admire them for what they have accomplished in their respective spheres, but the old ideal has gone forever. Strange as it may sound I was not a student who stood in awe of the faculty as faculty. I think I sized up the eccentricities & narrow mindedness of many of them as well then as I do now, so that I have been spared tremendous falls from dizzy heights of rapture. You have kept on growing with the years. You have never failed to measure up to the ideal of 1909 in scholarship, in common sense, in judgment & poise, in breadth of vision and beauty of spirit. And I have looked at you in the light of the same experiences with the weaknesses of human nature that I have used in judging others. Love is no protection against critical analysis. The status of married life at fifty proves this.
The criterion of a great person is his powers of adaptability, his habits of reaction and adjustment. Yours have been well tested. You have not had an easy life. To be sure you have been well & strong, but poor health is not a severe strain on the personality. You have watched colleagues & students with far less ability pursue their ambitions for research giving them unsparingly of your encouragement & praise. Yet I have never heard you murmur over circumstances that forced you to wait indefinitely for your own opportunity. It takes a great soul to do that. You have lived winter and summer in an environment that would work a saint, and yet for sanity of judgment & breadth of view I know of no one but Dr. Meyer or Miss Young to whom I would as soon go for an opinion.
I am glad of these glimpses of you, too few though they are. I like to see you getting joy & satisfaction out of the flower beds & the garden, and the discovery of new plants by the roadside, and the sound of a strange bird note. It is a picture that I carry with me into the materialistic world when people fall and hate and plot and lie and wrestle with each other for the vanity of gain. I hope you will stay then in the mountain, and always continue to welcome me when I come for refreshment.
My love to your mother. Tell her I had an omelet, glass of milk, 2 Vienna rolls & a chocolate bar for lunch!